NORTH SEA SUMMER

Summer does not begin in western Norway until the middle of June.  And Bergen is one of those cities, like Santiago de Compostela, where it always seems to rain.  Or snow, in the case of Bergen. As I was about to leave Bergen it occurred to me that the small, slightly broken umbrella we had been using might come in handy on a bicycle tour.  I took it with me, and I was glad I did.  I don't know why I'd never thought of it before.  It's not much help on those days of solid rain where you just have to get on with it, but in a sudden downpour it's possible to deploy the umbrella rapidly, wait a few minutes and then carry on, completely dry.  Also very useful on campsites, and very occasionally as a sunshade. From Bergen the North Sea Cycle Route goes south on cycle tracks at first and then, just when you are thinking that Norway is going to have cycle tracks everywhere, it dumps you onto a road just in time to climb a steep hill.  It doesn't mat...

Sitting on a bike all day I needed to find something to do with my brain at times.   This was especially the case when dealing with steep hills, where I started to find snatches of songs insinuating themselves into my mind and repeating over and over again.   The first of these was a song called ‘Nancy of Yarmouth’ in a version recorded by a Suffolk singer named Cyril Poacher back in the 1960s. I don’t know why it got into my head, but it did, and I thought I’d better learn the whole thing, so I found a transcription of the words on my phone then copied them onto a piece of paper and slipped it into the map case on my bar bag.  The pace of the song seemed to fit the rhythm of my pedal strokes perfectly, especially when going uphill.  And of course Yarmouth was over on the other side of the North Sea.  Learning this song took me through most of Norway, and when I wasn’t practising the song I devoted myself to learning to count in Norwegian. It was a ...