Day 8 Skottneset to Isle of Gurskoy (80 kms)

Another better day for distance took me across the peninsula where I was camped last night, over a mountain pass at about 1000 feet, and down to the head of the next small fjord, already so remote that a builder was using a helicopter to fly in bags of materials by winch, rather than attempt the road (the fjord itself being to shallow at this point, I presume, to accommodate a boat large enough to carry the load). Construction must be a costly business here. The route then took me over another mountain pass almost as high (Claud and I are getting better at these) and down to the Vanylvsforden. Farmers here are still making hay in the traditional Norwegian way, hanging grass out to dry on fence-like racks, instead of turning it on the ground like we do in Britain.

Haymaking

I paused at the village of Aheim to buy a sandwich, and before that to visit a museum of rural life that owes its existence to a woman who just wouldn't throw anything away. Valborg Kroken moved to Aheim in 1934, and according to the now- eponymous Valborg Museum "from 1950 on, while most people threw away tired, well-used objects from their daily life, Valborg collected them". There are textiles, worn clothing, kitchen utensils, radio transmitters which people in Aheim used for communication before telephone lines came, and a fearsome array of implements for carrying out procedures on sheep. She even hoarded the huge electric arc film projector from Aheim's tiny cinema when it closed its doors for good in 1966. The whole effect is to tell us more than any carefully-curated collection ever could about how hard life was for people (and sheep) in these outlying parts of Norway.

After another high-level ride across the neck of another peninsula, I caught the ferry to Arvik on the island of Gurskoy. I am finally starting to see more long-distance cyclists, as the EuroVelo 1 alternatives narrow. I met two young, fit guys from The Netherlands cycling to Nordkapp like me, and aiming to be there at least seven days quicker, and two German chaps on their way down from north of Trondheim on electric bikes.

I wild camped at 600 feet halfway across the island, at a picnic area beside a road that had seemed quite quiet when I cycled it, but suddenly seemed busy as I settled down to live beside it for a night.

Finally, I have solved one mystery. More than one writer and blogger on cycling in Norway has referred to being plagued by clouds of "blackfly" as they camp, or stop to adjust their bikes, or whatever. The behaviour described seemed worryingly familiar, and sure enough, here I am, driven to write my blog inside my tiny tent while swarms of Culicoides impunctatus lay seige outside. That's right -- it's the Highland midge.

Waiting for the Gurskoy ferry