By bus and boat to Stavanger - 28th May


Between Haugesund and Stavanger the original North Sea Cycle Route has been diverted.  This is because the ferry which used to run between Skudeneshavn, just south of Kopervik, and Kvitsøy, north of Stavanger, has been replaced by a tunnel.  Wikipedia tells me there are over 900 road tunnels in Norway with a length exceeding 750km.  In most of those tunnels you cannot ride a bicycle, though even if you could, you probably wouldn't want to.

I had been wondering what to do about this diversion when Gunther, who I'd met in Leirvik, told me he'd simply put his bike on a bus in Stavanger and it had taken him to the tunnel exit just north of Kopervik.  I'd then had a conversation with an English cyclist who had been unconvinced about the existence of a ferry between Nedstrand and Stavanger.  This persuaded me to take the bus, and even though it cheated me of a nice ride and ferry trip it was an interesting experience. The fact that it poured with rain all day and I didn't get wet was a bonus.

To an English person it seems remarkable that you can wait at a lonely bus terminal where the bus arrives on time, and then the driver takes your money (credit card no problem) and helps you slide your fully loaded bike into the luggage compartment. It's all pleasantly surprising.

The bus plunged directly into the tunnel, and what a tunnel!  There's a whole network down there, under the sea, with junctions and everything.  I even thought I saw a roundabout, but I was dozing and I may have dreamt it. After the tunnels there were bridges linking islands, then a ferry.  There were wide sweeps of sea, but it was dark and wet outside. Stavanger was full of tourists browsing the shoe shops and fashion shops and shops full of lovely things in the narrow streets.  Luckily there were supermarkets too to buy food.

And there was an old town, the model, apparently, for the village in the Disney movie Frozen.  The old town was dominated by a massive cruise ship that towered above the white-painted wooden houses.



Later I met people who had cycled via Nedstrand.  There is a ferry and it's an enjoyable ride. The map of the short trip to the bus terminal is here.

Tips:

  • you can often put your bike on a bus in Norway
  • treat with caution information about ferries gleaned from Google Maps
  • when you find a Tourist Information which is open (and many don't open until 'summer')  ask them to print out timetables for as many ferries as you think you might want to use.  


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Boats and holiday homes - Mandal to Arendal - 4th-6th June

Image
After a night with the nightingales (who were still singing in the morning) I headed off along the coast towards Kristiansand and Arendal.    Boat in garden - Lillesand It was a quiet sunny day and there were holiday homes and boats everywhere.   I began to think that there might be more boats than Norwegians.   By the time I reached Kristiansand it was feeling like summer.   I wandered around the town a bit and then set off to find the campsite out near the airport.   It was in a massive open field by a main road and was the most expensive I stayed on in Norway – more than twice the price of the excellent one at Sandnes the previous night. The girl on the check-in assured me it was the best in Kristiansand and I believed her because I’d been told the other one was more like a swamp. Map. The next day I continued on towards Arendal, inland at first to reach a bridge, then back to the coast. Lilac was coming into bloom, and dog-roses, and I ke...
Read more

Islands in the Waddenzee - 21st-23rd June

Image
I was woken at about midnight by sounds outside the tent.   I couldn’t figure out what was going on, half-asleep as I was.   Then I heard a clattering and clinking and I sat up and unzipped the tent.   Silhouetted against the faint glow from a light somewhere on the campsite I saw the shape of an animal, but I couldn’t be sure if it was a big animal far away or a small one nearby.   I pulled on some clothes and crawled outside to find that my cooking pots and one shoe were about ten metres from the tent. My carton of milk had disappeared and I never saw it again. In the morning I discovered that raids by the local foxes were quite common. South of Vedersø Klit the road ran along a narrow spit of sand between the sea and Rinkøbing fjord.   The campsite owner told me that it was far more interesting, if a little further, to cycle inland right around the fjord, and I took his advice. I was glad I did, even though my hopes of finding a good cup of coffee in the...
Read more

Getting to Bergen - Bike v Baggage Handlers

Image
In the summer of 2015 I cycled around the North Sea. I started in Bergen on 25th May and finally reached the northern tip of Shetland on 28th September having stopped in London for a month or so in the middle of the trip. I say it was summer, but it was snowing and raining in Bergen at the end of May, and it was so cold in Denmark at midsummer that I needed gloves and a wooly hat to walk on the beach.  Then, when it did get hot in Germany, there was no sea deep enough to swim in.  Nothing but mud and more mud.  But more of that another time. The website dedicated to the North Sea Cycle Route has closed down, so I've placed links to the guidebooks I used at the bottom of this post.  The most useful general blog I've found about travelling by bike is Tom's Bike Trip .  I don't want to repeat what others have written, but there are a few things I discovered that might be helpful to you if you're thinking of making this journey, especially if you've not been...
Read more