The living room floor was covered in gear; packrafts, buoyancy aids, paddles, camping kit, climbing gear, ropes, cooking kit, dehydrated meals, waterproofs, bike tools, bikes.. and we realised we couldn’t take it all!
We were packing for a bikepacking/bikerafting trip to the Lofoten Islands in Artic Norway, pedalling up through the archipelago over a week from Moskenes in the SW to Harstad in the NE. We would need to cover 60-70km/day but had ideas to link some sections by packraft and do some rock climbing along the way, ideally on some crags only accessible by boat/raft.
We realised that practically it was a toss up between taking the climbing gear (10kg+) and taking the packrafts... We decided on the packrafts as we both wanted to explore the fjords and hopefully get away from the tourist insta-trail.
Flying into one airport and out of another causes some logistical issues when travelling with bikes, we sourced cardboard bike boxes for the journey out and hoped the bike shop owner in Harstad kept his word that he would keep a couple of boxes aside for us at the end.
We flew from London to Bodo (via Oslo) and then after a hasty bike assembly rode down to the port to catch the evening ferry to Moskenes, located in the SW tip of the islands. This ferry, like all others we travelled on between the islands, was free for cyclists with no pre-booking required.
The islands are stunningly beautiful with sheer granite peaks rising straight up from the crystal clear water. The roads tend to hug the coast where they can, with bridges, tunnels or ferries linking the islands.
We spent the next week cycling up through the islands, taking side trips to explore fjords by packraft, camp on islands and go bouldering. The weather varied from the sublime to the ridiculous and come the end the guy in the bike shop had no recollection of saving bike boxes for us but fortunately came up trumps!
All told, it was an amazing trip through a beautiful archipelago and I would totally recommend it, even for the effort it takes to get there.
Highlights:
An early morning paddle up Kjerk fjord & Bunes fjord on Moskenesøya from Reine, before hiking over to the stunning Bunes beach.
An overnight island camp. At the end of a long day riding we arrived at our planned camp spot to find camping was not permitted there, so we paddled across to a little island, where we were only disturbed by the resident otter.
Meeting Simon & Lola who were riding to Nord Kapp from Austria and spending an evening trading stories with them in an amazing shelter. They were most bemused when we arrived tired and wet and having spotted fins in the water offshore, Rich proceeded to blow up his raft and head out to investigate! I was left explaining that yes he had made the raft himself and yes it was safe..
Lowlights
A long day riding in heavy rain, interrupted by a puncture and the realisation that my old pump didn’t actually work! We were eventually saved by a passing cheerful Dutch cyclist who provided the most amazing pump and the immortal words “Poor you - First Brexit and then a puncture!”
Beta:
Wild camping is legal in Norway, subject to some sensible guidelines, such as not camping within 150 metres of the nearest house/cabin. They’ve had to tighten these regulations on Lofoten due to the large number of visitors basically taking the mickey, camping in inappropriate places, leaving rubbish, etc. There’s some more information on the background and rules for Lofoten here.
However if you get off the beaten track it’s easy to find amazing camp spots, including some great shelters (like very basic bothies).
Packrafting – we had hoped to build packraft travel/crossings into the journey, but the coastline is very exposed and with each main island being connected by road or ferry it didn’t really make a lot of sense to paddle these crossings. This coupled with our limited time to travel from one end to the other meant we only used them for side excursions and island camps. However taking them certainly enabled us to access some amazing spots we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
Resupply – The islands are a major tourist destination and hence there are plenty of small shops/cafes to restock. Prices weren’t as eye-wateringly expensive as we expected, well except camping gas!
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Writing and imagery by Ben Sutton / @cornishboyindevon
