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Outside Magazine, April 2005
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The Hard Way
Valhalla on Wheels (cont.)

OUR BIKE PATH passed through the Troll Wood by design.

Since leaving Flekkefjord, we'd been spinning along the North Sea Cycle Route (NSCR), the longest signposted cycleway in the world. Linking 3,729 miles of trafficless trails, paths, and paved bikeways, the route circles the North Sea and passes through eight countries: Scotland, England, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. One of the founders of the NSCR, a 53-year-old professional city planner named Vicky Hartland Gramstad, happened to live just north of the Troll Wood. She joined us later that day.

"Piecing it all together took years," explained Vicky, rolling just ahead of us into a fierce headwind. "It required the cooperation of 68 regions and some 700 municipalities."

The North Sea Cycle Route opened in May 2001. Half a million bicycle maps were printed in six languages, and thousands of small bicycle signs were planted at the junctions. Costs for developing the cycleway are split 50/50 between the European Union and local communities. As secretariat for the NSCR, Vicky receives half her salary from the government of Norway and the other half from the EU.

"The goals of the North Sea Cycle Route are multifarious," Vicky continued, still pounding blithely into the wind. "Naturally, to encourage bicycling, the healthiest form of travel. But also to promote economic development in remote villages. And to promote transnational cooperation. And to recognize and strengthen the ancient connections between the countries of the North Sea.

"But I should let you two go," she said, as if she were holding us back rather than pulling us along. "You still have three hours to go to the Sola Strand Hotel." With that she whirled around and waved goodbye like the Good Witch of the North.

Harald and I ground onward. I thought we'd sadly seen the last of Vicky, but she must have gotten home and then realized that the Sola Strand Hotel, on the coast just outside Stavanger, was much farther than we'd calculated.

Three hours later, still far from our hotel, dusk ready to pounce and the wind now blowing so hard we were just barely riding faster than we could walk, we watched as Vicky and her husband, Egil, pulled up beside us in their compact Mercedes. I had no idea what was going on, but Harald did. He dismounted at once and popped off his front wheel.

"What're you doing?!"

"What do you think?" said Harald, accepting what was, for him, a heaven-sent ride. Egil was already hefting the bike up onto the car rack.

I was aghast. "You're kidding, right?!"

Harald gave me his are-you-really-that-stupid look.

"What happened to the intimacy of cycling?"

"The wind ate it whole."

"I'll ride in."

"Remember your promise, Mr. Hardman."

Frankly, getting in that car was one of the hardest things I've done on any bike tour. I would have gladly ridden into the headwind right through the night. But this was part of my bargain.

Humming along in the warm glass-and-metal capsule, spared from the knuckle-freezing cold and howling wind, Harald the Sweatyhair was slumped in the front seat looking like a tattered Winnie the Pooh, a contented, sleepy smile on his face.

"I christen this the Ride of Shame," he said.


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