Old Man On A Bike (Trip 2): The Venerable Claud Butler heads to the Arctic

I have promised my wife that I am not planning to emulate the “cyclo-nomade” Jacques Sirat, whom I met in a small town in northern Turkey on my 2024 ride from Scotland to Istanbul. Jacques set off on a round-the-world bike ride in 1994, and as far as I know is going still.

This year's trip for me, from the Tay Bridge to the North Cape in Norway – Nordkapp -- will be much shorter than the Bosphorous Bridge excursion – 1300 to 1600 miles as opposed to 2600. It should be completed in a mere six weeks, and my elderly but still sprightly Claud Butler “Regent” tourer – part of my life for more than three decades – will trundle through just two countries, Scotland and Norway.

Days 1 and 2 Dundee to Aberdeen (123 kms)

As last year, I “banked” this section of the ride in advance – setting off from the iconic Tay Road Bridge one weekend in April, heading north up National Cycle Route 1. One of my friends described the NCR 1 between Dundee and Arbroath as a “motorway for cyclists” – flat, well surfaced, mostly off-road, and with a prevailing south-westerly at one's back, it can feel a bit like one.

Passing Broughty Castle at the mouth of the Tay

National Cycle Route 1 on the way to Montrose -- ablaze with gorse in the late afternoon sunshine

After a late start, I stopped overnight at a campsite at Miltonhaven, just south of Johnshaven, very well equipped for cycle-tourists, with a kitchen and sitting area to get out of the weather. The site, right by a beach suitable for wild swimming, if such is your wont, is run by a wonderful couple now in their 80s, so sadly 2025 is their last season. The chap is an avid collector of artefacts from the Napoleonic Wars, and took time to show me part of his extraordinary collection of incredibly intricate scrimshaw ships, carved by French Prisoners of War incarcerated on prison hulks in the lower reaches of the Thames, from the bones of beef they were given to make stew. French officers were given "parole" -- that is to say their word as gentlemen that they would not try to escape -- and allowed to live ashore, where they marketed the models made by the enlisted me on the hulks.

The official NCR 1 runs along the main road from St Cyrus to the fishing village of Johnshaven, but with a touring or gravel bike, carrying on along the coast path is a perfectly viable option, and saves a long climb up to the main road only to drop all the way down again to sea level little more than a mile further on. The "Lobster Shop" at Johnshaven is a favourite stop of mine, but it was too early or a Sunday or something so I pressed on to Stonehaven for fish and chips, trying hard to comply with the orders of the Provost, posted on this notice in the Town Centre:

I approached Aberdeen following what another cyclist told me was part of the "Elsick Mounth" ancient trackway -- now part of NCR 1 -- before picking up the cycle track into the city that follows the bed of the old railway line to Royal Deeside.

Having thus completed the Scottish section of my route from the Tay Bridge to Nordkapp, my intention was to return to Aberdeen Airport with the Ven Claud on the "Ember" electric bus, and fly from there to Bergen, Norway, in the third week of June to continue. In fact I had to delay the start of the long Norwegian section by a week to welcome into our family a new dog. The result of this was that I had to fly from Edinburgh instead.

Day 3 Bergen to Dalsoyra (89 kms, including 45 by express boat)

Sitting next to me on the flight from Edinburgh to Bergen was a Norwegian nurse, returning from a conference with an anaesthetist colleague. She told me I would find that Norway, which I have never visited before, "like Scotland, but with more". She explained: "More mountains, more space... more rain, more wind, more cold.." She also told me that Norwegians would treat me "like a family member" -- so long as I behaved like one myself -- and made sure I stored the number to call for medical assistance (123) in my phone. She also told me it would be "not raining" in five day's time. Norwegians, I discover, discuss the weather in this way. Whereas we might say, "It's going to be raining on Thursday", they say, for example, "It's going to be not raining on Tuesday". This, I gather, is because precipitation of some kind or other is the default setting.

I stayed the night of my arrival in Bergen's HI Hostel Montana -- quite simply the best hostel I've stayed at anywhere in the world for a mere £28 a night including an all-you-can-eat breakfast of fruit, cold meats, cheese and all the usual that would put a top hotel to shame, served in a room with panoramic views overlooking the city. Reaching it from the city centre or the nearest stop on the airport light rail involves a 150 metre climb from sea level but it's worth the effort in every way.

Bergen's Kode Art Museum contains an excellent collection of paintings by Edvard Munch. Munch's most famous work, "The Scream" is in the country's national museum in Oslo, but Bergen's Kode has his "Frieze of Life" in its entirety -- an incredible series of paintings about human emotion and, sometimes, mental illness which it is impossible to sum up in a cycling blog.

Also before setting off on my ride north, I took time to visit the city's Bryggen district -- a waterfront area of wooden merchant's houses and warehouses dating back to the days of the European Union's 13th century predecessor, the Hanseatic League. The area is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which makes it all the more extraordinary, as my guidebook pointed out, that conservations had to spend much of the 20th century fighting plans to demolish it and replace it with a shopping mall.

The historic Bryggen district of Bergen

All this sightseeing led to a late afternoon start, and my plan had been to catch a ferry (in Bergen people take ferries like buses, a bit like in Venice) to the suburb of Knarvik, which would have taken me about 12 kilometres out of town, in order to escape the traffic. I waited for this "bus-ferry" for 45 minutes, arriving at the quay in plenty of time, only to discover it doesn't run in the first two weeks of July. This is contrary to many other transport links in Norway, many of which only run in the summer. The reason, apparently, is that it is a commuter ferry, and so many workers are on holiday in Norway in July that it isn't worth running it. I had already lost time, so decided to take an express boat to its first port of call up the coast. This took me 45 kilometres rather than 12, so I'm cheating already on my bike ride to Nordkapp, but it also took me farther west, allowing the Ven. Claud and I to take a detour to the westernmost point of mainland Norway, Vardetangen, then a short ride across the peninsular to the state-run ferry (free for cyclists) across the Fensfjorden to Slovag. With rainclouds gathering, I headed north, looking for a suitable spot for my first night's wild camping in Norway. I found an idyllic spot beside another fjord -- Eidsfjorden -- across from an uninhabited island that seemed to be home to a pair of ospreys. I just got the tent up before the onset of very heavy rain, forecast to continue for 17 hours. When it's over, however, the Norwegian weather app Yr promises sunshine!

The old bike at Vardetangen -- westmost point of mainland Norway, which seemed fitting to visit on our way to Europe's most northerly. Everything beyond here is islands or sea