We had spent the night in the Gothenburg Hostel in a similar fashion to sardines. The room 5 of us stayed in was tiny, and very intimate but we were in high spirits specially after a feast the night before in the main street in the city. I make no apologies guys, this is going to be a long one.
We got up early and had to meet reporters and photographers at the local park to feature in the Sfar Nytt, Stena's magazine. When we got to the park it was pretty cold, but we had to strip down to shorts and tshirts (the full road captain gear) for the sponsors photos. We'd all been talking about how daft we would look in it but later in the cycle we would be glad of the gear and our attitudes changed towards it.
We wanted to set off about 9.30am but due to some last minute issues with a wonky wheel on Shauns bike - any time he touched the brake his front wheel shifted drastically to the left, clearly this had to be fixed before we left. With a little ingenuity and a lot of swearing under our breaths we got it working suitably.
Right...ready now...oh wait...Douglas's chain began to rub badly as it was routed incorrectly through the tensioner at the rear mech. Out came the chain splitter to break the chain and rebuild it but the pin fell out so we had to remove two of the links instead, the chain was pretty stiff though when we rebuilt it and you could see that it was still sort of jumping so a quick prise apart with a screwdriver (marked "this is not a pry-bar") we managed to loosen the chain. A dash of oil was added to help lube it up. And there you have a recipe for a working chain.
We set off and made excellent time in the morning, despite the false starts and the wrong turns at the start that saw us having to absolutely hammer it along a 5km stretch of the E6 (a motorway). By the time we finished that sprint we were all ready for a rest, and thankfully found a chocolate biscuit factory which had a shop at it. We bought loads of biscuits to replenish energy reserves and had a short rest where we met with Peter who was driving our van with spares and our gear. We all unloaded the spare clothes here from our backpacks and left them in the van (except for the obviously required waterproof jackets).
We then proceeded to go over various hills and bridges, all the time thinking "it was meant to be a lot flatter than this, why isn't it flat? I'm going to die if this doesn't end soon". The hills never ended. The bridges thankfully did. We had trained in Scotland using the southern highlands as our routes however, the hills in scotland have downhills as long as the up, whereas in Sweden they seem to go up and up and up and up and then quickly down. So while in Scotland we'd be pedalling only 50% of the time of the hills, in sweden it was more like 80%.
About 1 and a half hours from the end of the days cycling to Freds parents holiday home we encountered a Norwegian on a bike who'se first question was "Are you scottish?" when we replied positively he asked Douglas "Are you Tom?" we pointed at Tom and then the penny dropped. It was Svein, a person Tom and I had contacted months ago for information about cycling Gothenburg to Oslo as he had made a site about it in the past. We'd invited him to join us for part of the cycle.
We cycled on till we met the ferry which would take us to the island we were staying on that night.
The cycle to the house was a killer, it was ALL uphill and seemed to take half an hour on its own. We were glad of the shower at the house, despite all the hot water being used up long before we had all showered. It was still great.
Bob and Fred made a spectacular dinner of pork, sausages, salads and pasta, perfect for refuelling after the days long cycle. We sat up until late. On an island with not a single street light the sky was amazing, I've seen skies like that before in Italy but I was too young to appreciate the sight.
It was a sublimely clear night, we could see everything in the sky, from the ghostly band of stars across the sky of the milky way to the satellites we could see tracking across the velvety blue backdrop. Mercury was visible low on the sky too, brighter than any of the stars around it. We were all so dumbstruck by the spectacle that we switched all the lights off, including mobile phones and just sat quietly watching the sky. Even the crickets seemed to quiet down for a short time. Douglas spotted a shooting star streak across the sky and pointed it out to us. Surely this was a good sign for the cycle!
Bob, ever thoughtful, produced a bottle of single malt from his bags and toasted us all and the cycle. Bob, your words of wisdom, your witt and banter throughout the cycle proved to be entertainment and valuable to us all. Thank you.
Thanks to Freds parents too for letting us stay at their holiday home that night. Hopefully we didn't make too much of a mess.
No comments:
Post a Comment