Re­a­ching the Po­lar Circle

The high­est pass of the who­le trip

The winds have va­nis­hed and I have no dif­fi­cul­ties to get on. Af­ter days of in­dif­fe­rence I sud­den­ly rea­li­ze what I did when I star­ted in Bonn. I get the ma­gic and the temp­ta­ti­on of an en­ter­pri­se li­ke that. I pass the bor­der to Nor­way and soon af­ter­wards I look down on the ugly vil­la­ge of Mo I Ra­na, still 25 mi­les away, 600 me­ters be­low on the coast of the po­lar sea.

Af­ter 21 days and 1300 mi­les the bike leans against the wall of the hos­tel. And for the first ti­me I rea­li­ze that the tar­get of my jour­ney is de­fi­ni­te­ly not out of re­ach.

So I don't rest ve­ry long. I buy some food, wash my clo­thes and try in vain to find a new front pack. The old one, that car­ried tools and the map, has bro­ken wings, i. e. the mount has fal­len apart due to the hea­vy load and the kicks from un­ta­red roads.

The next mor­ning I head north along the E 6. The road was built by the ger­man in­va­ders in the 1940^th and it is said that there is one bo­dy ly­ing un­der­neath each me­ter of the sur­face, most of them sol­diers from Yu­go­sla­via. A mo­nu­ment re­minds the tou­rist of that dis­re­pu­ta­ble pe­ri­od of ger­man his­to­ry.

I have to climb up to­wards the arc­tic circle at 707 m, the high­est point of the who­le jour­ney. Com­pa­red to the Col de le Bo­net­te or Col Ag­nel this is re­di­cu­lous. But at that ti­me, with a ra­tio of 42:28 teeth, it is a fier­ce fight. How­ever, af­ter 80 ki­lo­me­ters I have the chan­ce to ta­ke a re­al­ly spec­ta­cu­lar pho­to at a spec­ta­cu­lar mo­nu­ment. There are no trees any mo­re at a le­vel li­ke that and the «Nord­land­bahn» meets the road.

For eve­ry tou­rist on his way north it is an ab­sul­te must to ta­ke a pho­to of that mo­nu­ment at the Arc­tic Circle. In 1984 a de­layed ac­ti­on re­lea­se and a tri­pod we­re used to make what is cal­led a «sel­fie» to­day. How­ever, from an ear­lier trip by train I know that the pas­sen­gers on the train try to ta­ke pho­tos as well whi­le pas­sing the mo­nu­ment.

The road fol­lows the high pla­teau for some mi­les. The sce­ne­ry is less spec­ta­cu­lar than the lo­ca­ti­on, i. e. the fact being so far north. The de­scend to­wards the coast, how­ever, is of gre­at be­au­ty. There are rocks, cas­ca­des and by and by the fo­rest reap­pears. Af­ter 130 km I put up my tent in the woods, as it is too far to the coast on a day li­ke that. The day is mo­ist and the ter­rain is wet, so it is ve­ry un­li­ke­ly to burn down the fo­rest by a shel­te­red camp fire.