I woke up early, checked the time and listened to the announcements, then tried to nap a bit more. The captain’s voice blared out from the speaker on the wall inside my room, declaring that we all needed to be out and gathered in the hallways, and making my heart bounce off the top of my skull. No more sleep for me. In half an hour I was out sitting next to my bags in a hallway with only 5 hours of sleep.
I felt exhausted. I had to move my bags to be nearer a window and get cell signal, and from there I looked at maps and prices and found a hotel in a city 15 miles south of the ferry dock for a decent price. The weather report was good so I figured I would ride there even though I was tired, keeping the day from being a total waste in terms of ground covered.
When I moved my bags I accidentally left behind my Airpods case, and when I went back to look for it, it was gone. I double-checked all my bags and it was definitely missing. I threaded my way up the long hallway to the reception desk, passing a long stream of people exiting the boat, and asked an attendant if they’d seen a headphones case. I held up my other case to show her. She nodded, turned around, and pulled my case out of a drawer. True to that Danish sense of courtesy, someone had found the case and walked it all the way over to the lost items desk. Back home in Oakland, someone would have just jammed it in a pocket and strolled away.
Thank you, kind stranger who found these, wherever you are!
You need a vehicle like this, in case you need to, like, run over a beer can in the road or something.
I had to stand around for a long time waiting for cars to move, since me and the other cyclist had been boxed in by three very long tour buses parked too close for a bike to squeeze between. I moved my bike several times to make space for the buses to turn, and the other cyclist followed my lead. Finally I got a gap in the outgoing traffic, and I was down the ramp and in Denmark.
It was a pretty grand entrance, actually. The first thing I saw beyond the ship was a busy staging area full of moving vehicles, then a procession of metal cylinders in the distance, disappearing up past the ceiling of the cargo bay. When I emerged I saw that each cylinder was the trunk of a gigantic wind turbine, the blades gracefully rotating as flocks of birds sailed between them. Then the shadow of the boat ended and I felt a wash of warm sun all over my face and arms — the first I’d felt in weeks. I was so distracted I had to pull the bike over into a cargo stacking space and just hang out there, absorbing sunlight, for ten minutes. I also took the time to remove my sweater. Wouldn’t be needing that…
The wind gently guided me onto a side-road, and after only a few minutes I was well away from the ship and moving into town. I was starving so my first stop was a little cafe. The woman behind the counter had light blond hair and a deep brown tan. She reminded me of being a kid at the beach in California, running around in Junior Lifeguards class with all the other little tan blond kids. I settled down at a table outside in the sun, and ate a massive open-faced sandwich and most of a mocha.
Back on land that can grow vegetables! Eaten open-faced, of course.
Back on land that can grow vegetables! Eaten open-faced, of course.
As I ate, I chatted with my Mom and gave my impressions of the country, and learned a bit of family history.
Me
Wow, Denmark is as amazing as I remember it for biking… Bike lanes in many places, extremely polite drivers, nice and flat, and SUNSHINE!!!!
A 70 year old man held the door for me at the cafe I visited, since I had bike bags in my hands. I just saw two women in their 80’s out for a walk together with sticks and a walker, and both waved and grinned at me.
Mom
That’s how I remember the people too! Friendly, slightly reserved, and very polite! I believe “gracious” is the best word.
Me
Good word!
Going from extreme hills and 90mph winds to this is quite a shock. Camping in the Faroe Islands weather would have been a disaster, but there are campsites all over Denmark, more than anywhere else I’ve seen. I wonder if grandpa got an interest in camping from memories of Denmark? Or was he too young?
Mom
Your grandad was only five when they came here, so I doubt it.
Me
Hmm, well perhaps even at the age of five he had some interest in camping already cultivated.
Mom
Part of his growing up was in San Francisco very near Golden Gate Park where he spent a lot of time. Later there were many trips to Muir Woods.
Me
I did not know that!
Mom
Also, my uncle Happy, Denny’s father, was in the class above my mother at Berkeley High, so later they must have lived in Berkeley.
Me
I assume Berkeley is where grandpa met grandma?
Mom
I think so. Mother had a friend Essie in her dance troupe who was his cousin, so it was through her that they met.
Did you visit Copenhagen the last time you were there? That was where your grandad was born.
Me
It’s on my itinerary! I fly out from there.
I was now both nourished and totally wired, and it was time to ride. The Danish countryside did not disappoint, and I stopped constantly for photos.
It was wonderful. A enchanting reminder of just how relaxing and healing a bike ride can be. The sun warmed me, the air was fresh, the wind was behind me, the hills were gentle, the cars were shockingly polite and no one was speeding, and there were nice separated bike paths and birds and farm animals all around.
I stopped near a field and saw a mound of apples, left out for horses and cattle to find, and picked a few out for myself.
I sliced it with my pocket knife and used the backpack as a kitchen table, and stood there eating perfectly ripe apple by the side of a field on a quiet country road for half an hour.
I don’t care who you are, I could convert you to love bicycle touring in one week by getting you a long-wheelbase recumbent bicycle and putting you at the northwest end of Denmark, and giving you a phone and a sweater and telling you to cycle to the southeast corner. By the time you arrived you would be in such a state of nourished relaxed sun-tanned bliss that bicycle touring would forevermore be part of your life.
I also passed through a bunch of little towns. I felt very slightly disoriented by the transition between houses and countryside, and when I realized why I laughed to myself: I come from a place where farmland is in one region, and communities are usually pressed together in another. Mostly because of the presence of suburbs defined by the automobile, but also because parcels of farmland are generally bigger back home, with the houses on them set way back from the road.
There are parts of California where one can cruise from farmland to houses to farmland in the space of a few miles on a bike, but they aren’t typical. I was getting the impression that in Denmark, it’s like this by default, everywhere outside major cities.
I learned later on that this is the pattern in the north of Denmark, but suburbs and sprawl appear as one goes south, making the experience more like California.
Also, you know how I could tell this was a low-crime area relative to Oakland? Two things: Unlocked bicycles are everywhere, and even the young women out jogging alone look up and smile hello as I ride by.
One woman was out walking her dog, and she saw me and made her dog sit down on the grass next to the sidewalk so I could pass more easily.
I saw people out and about, but even as I entered an actual city, I consistently saw fewer people in public than I was expecting. Were the Danes still largely sequestered due to COVID restrictions, even a year and a half after the pandemic? Perhaps the vaccine roll-out was slower here than back home? Or was life just slower here?
By the time the 15 miles was done I was in fine spirits. The city had a quaint central area, and I took a bunch more photos, then checked into the hotel without trouble and re-fitted the bike for an evening out. From there I imported and sorted photos in a cafe while enjoying another tuna sandwich.
In spite of the lack of sleep on the ferry, I felt awake. On a whim I decided to see a movie. The local cinema was showing a recent American release, “Dune”, in English with Danish subtitles. I rolled the bike over and almost wondered if I should bother locking it to the rack or just leave it standing there like most of the others.
Everybody milling about with snacks, before the movie.
The movie itself was kind of disappointing, but I still had a good time. It was a very posh theater experience, and hanging out in close quarters with a bunch of Danish people felt oddly comfortable. They stood very near each other and made a low hum of conversation, sounding more like a classy dinner party without a band, instead of a bunch of strangers in public. It was interesting comparing it to the standoffish Icelanders I’d been dealing with. In fact, I couldn’t remember seeing that many people so close together anywhere in Iceland, except inside a few of the tourist-filled restaurants in the capital city, and the noise in those was appalling.
Only a few hours after the boat launched, I began to feel feverish. This wasn’t some kind of sea-sickness; I wasn’t prone to that. It felt more like a mild flu, including some digestive problems. Had I finally caught a variant of COVID-19?
I walked around the deck a little to see if fresh air would help. No luck.
The journey to Denmark from the Faroe Islands includes one whole day at sea. For the next 30 hours or so, I slept, tossing around on the tiny bed in my tiny room, conscious only of the surging ocean beneath the boat in the darkness. Occasionally I drank water from the sack I’d filled before embarking. That had been a great idea because the water available on the ship was either foul tasting or tourist-grade expensive.
Eventually the fever broke and I felt much better, but all the sleep had wrecked my body’s sense of day and night. It didn’t help that the transition to European time had cut two hours from the clock. I grazed on some cafeteria snacks while listening to an audiobook, then spent the final night on the boat drifting around in a haze of semi-sleep that wouldn’t make a great start to my Denmark ride.
I spent the day indoors, trying to get my body to stop aching. Took a nap in the middle of the day.
The AirBnB owner came by to chat, and decided to give me a ride to the local restaurant up the road, and wait while I grabbed my phone-in meal. What a greta guy! Along the way we chatted a bit about work and travel schedules. He said he wanted to visit the US some time. I told him he was welcome to stay in my spare room if he ever visited San Francisco.
He asked about my journey and I talked a little about Iceland and Denmark, and how I had been able to negotiate remote work. He said that getting time off to travel was a very different situation in the Faroe Islands: If you wanted to take time off, you just went up to your boss and said, “I want to take three months off,” and your boss would nod and off you’d go.
In the evening I watched more brainless Marvel entertainment: “Thor” and part of “The Avengers” There were whole middle sections of both movies that I’d completely forgotten. After that I stayed up much later than I expected to, writing short email responses. My mind was scratching at the old relationship question again, asking, “What do I want in a partner now, given that I’ve turned down so many different kinds of people over these last few years?”
Matt
I had no idea you were out there! Aren’t those the islands off the West Coast, off San Francisco?
Me
Uh…
Matt
The ones we dumped a ton of radioactive nuclear waste around? Or am I… I think I’m mixing that up.
I got nine good hours, with occasional waking. As I was walking around in my dream I heard myself snoring, so either I wasn’t entirely asleep, or my brain was playing a bizarre trick on me.
I coughed a bit. Was I recovering from something, or coming down with something else? Not a great time for it, here at the end of the world. I only had a few hours left in this AirBnB.
I lingered for a while in the dining room, enjoying the diffuse morning sunlight, and the cozy contrast of the inside heat with the blustery wind combing the hills outside.
A charming place! But I didn’t have a boat to launch here, and the weather wasn’t great for hiking. With only a couple more days on the islands it made sense to turn around and go right back up the hill.
The bike was nearly dry from yesterday, which was a shame because it was just going to get wet again today…
I rode to the edge of town where the road began ascending the valley, and once I was beyond the buildings the wind went from annoying to ferocious. It was coursing down the hill right into my face, pushing me and the bike directly away from where I needed to go.
Out of curiosity I called up the wind tracking app I’d installed a few days ago.
In the above image, the Faroe Islands are those little dots straight south from that formation that looks suspiciously like the eye of a hurricane, midway between Iceland and Norway.
In bike touring, you plan to go to the safest place, on the safest route, at the safest time and speed, and then you’re okay because you only break a couple of those rules when your plans change. Today there was bound to be trouble, because I was breaking all the rules at once. Even if I wanted to reschedule, I couldn’t because there was nowhere to stay in this town for the night, and if I tried to camp, my equipment would instantly be destroyed. And there was only one road out. And it wasn’t safe.
It was about 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) and 300 meters (1000 feet) up to the pass between this town and the next. I tried pedaling at first, but the wind gusted unpredictably, throwing me off balance. Only about 50 meters away from the last building I stumbled out of the seat and began to push the bike, walking on the left side so I could keep one hand on the front brake, which was the stronger of the two. The wind got worse as I began the ascent, and the gusts became so strong that unless I took defensive maneuvers they could knock me backward and onto the ground.
When a surge began to hit me, I gripped the brake and leaned my torso over the back of the seat, pushing the tires down onto the road with my weight and joining myself and the bike into one object. As I did this, I turned my head to the right, facing downhill, because the wind was blowing rain at my head so fiercely it felt like a dozen needles piercing my skin. It was so painful that the first few times I impulsively checked my face to make sure I wasn’t bleeding. With my head turned, the raindrops blasted the back of my helmet instead, making a sound every time like a bundle of dry spaghetti snapping slowly in half.
Fun fact I only learned later: The winds on the northern and southern edges of the Faroe Islands are generally worse than the interior.
Some years are milder than others, and this year was mild in the sense that the summer was longer, delaying the onset of the tougher weather in the fall. But that tougher weather did arrive, and I was in the midst of it.
In the distance I could see the wind churning the grass violently all across the hillside. All the animal pens were vacant: The animals were all indoors. I should be following their example.
The road out of Gjógv had numerous turnouts – little appendages of pavement on either side of the road – and I lingered at each one so that cars could pass me. The driving rain worked into all the seams of my clothing, but the outer layer did still separate my clothes from the wind, allowing me to stay reasonably warm.
Just after the first turnout, the wind lashed at the bike, and the recently-superglued side mirror snapped right off and tumbled onto the road. “Awww, come on!!” I yelled, then awkwardly turned the bike in a loop so I could get a few meters back down the hill and pick the mirror up. Honestly I had been lucky, because if the wind was gusting it could have just carried the mirror upward and out to sea. I wedged it into my retention straps. Maybe I could come up with a better repair plan later in Tórshavn.
Covering the 2.5 kilometers to the top of the mountain pass took hours. I have no idea how many. I couldn’t see the sun, and all I could hear was the wind. I kept hoping it would get less intense but it only got worse. Close to the top, it was averaging about 30 meters a second — just over 65 miles per hour. Many times I didn’t square myself and the bike into the wind quite quickly enough and was nearly blown off my feet. The gusting had no pattern. There was no safe window where I could relax my body.
Just before I reached the top, an especially hard blast shoved the bike out of my hands, and away to the right. It toppled over, and the combined slope and the wind began to actually push it several meters back down the road on its side. No small feat, since the gear and bike combined weigh well over 45 kilograms (100 pounds.)
I jogged carefully after it and hunkered down on the leeward side, then very slowly pushed it upright. The journey down the road had scraped the corner off the netting on my seat, and put a tear in it longer than the palm of my hand.
I knew from a glance that it would probably continue to tear until the seat was unusable, but I didn’t know whether that gave me another day or another month. The road also tore a hole in the rain cover over my backpack, which was annoying but much more fixable: I could just slap a square of duct tape over that when I got to a city.
The most disappointing effect of the tumble only became clear to me after I’d pushed the bike another 15 meters or so, reaching the top. I glanced up to see what my GPS said the elevation was, and the GPS was gone. Apparently it had been popped off the handlebars when the bike fell.
“Awwwww, dangit,” I said into the wind. I couldn’t even turn around to look where it might have fallen because I would be too off-balance, but ahead of me was a wire fence right across the top of the pass, with a gap for the road. I struggled forward another 15 meters and shoved the bike over the cattle-guard, then turned left and lined it up against the fence so the wind was pressing it into the wire. Then I walked back down the road, leaning back, going in small steps. A surprise surge in the wind could send me face-first onto the downslope of the cement and push me, and if I was lucky it would only tear big holes in my clothing. Anything less than lucky and I would break an arm.
The search was fruitless. In my memory of how the bike fell, I saw the handlebars pointing off to the right, and that way led down the slope of the valley into the churning grass. The GPS was a light plastic thing; it had most certainly been blown right over the edge and was probably 200 meters away tangled in some roots. It was black. I would never find it even if the weather was suddenly perfect.
“Well, crap,” I thought. “It’s just going to sit there in the grass until the battery runs out, recording nothing. Then it will probably remain undiscovered until the weather destroys it completely. Talk about e-waste.” I felt helpless. I wasn’t even sure what to learn from the experience: In 15 years of biking with a GPS as my constant companion, I had never once lost one from an impact. This was a pretty special circumstance.
I mince-walked back up to the bike and turned it into the wind. When I was over the top of the pass by about 30 meters the wind seemed to die down somewhat. “Oh thank goodness,” I thought, and tried to get back on the bike. The road zig-zagged sharply just ahead, and all seemed well until I went around the first bend, and the wind came back just as fiercely as it was on the other side of the pass. I dismounted and returned to pushing.
But first I took a careful self-portrait to show my lunatic expression:
This is the expression you get on your face when you’ve been bracing against 90mph gusts of wind for five hours.
This is the expression you get on your face when you’ve been bracing against 90mph gusts of wind for five hours.
Yes folks, that is the face of a wind-blown lunatic, being stupid, out in stupid weather. Behold! Do not follow the example of this person!
I thought going downhill would make things easier, even if the wind was the same. That turned out to be true and I did manage to coast for a good 500 meters on one straightaway, but then the road turned up again, and the wind added a layer of ferocity even more extreme than what I’d felt at the pass. I was now being hit by gusts as hard as 40 meters a second — 90 miles per hour. I had to lean over with my chest pressed to the side of the seat and push very hard just to take each single step forward.
Despite my best efforts to improve my tactics for bracing myself and moving at the right time, I lost control of the bike and it pitched over at least four more times. Two women driving a small car passed me and asked if I was okay, and if perhaps they could carry some of my bags ahead to my destination, since their car was far too small for my bike. I turned them down, partially out of stubborn politeness, but mostly for a reason I didn’t really want to explain to them: I needed the bags as ballast, or the bike would surely be blown right off the road, with me tumbling along or chasing desperately behind it. I gave them my bravest “I’m fine, just going very slow” reassurance and they went on their way, though I could tell they didn’t really buy it.
I assume they mentioned me to friends later on, with words like, “Crazy guy on a bike.” I cop to that.
It’s funny… I get a bike, and the exercise keeps me healthy, which saves my life, so it’s a good influence. But it compels me to go out into these dangerous situations and risk my life, so the bike is a bad influence. But then I put so much gear on the bike, that the sheer weight of it keeps me from getting killed. So, good influence?
Finally I pushed up to the intersection I’d passed before — the one where the road sent an offshoot way down to the east, making some angular turns and plummeting 300 meters to the tiny town of Funningur by the sea. I was hoping that the wind would get progressively calmer as I moved downhill, but I could tell I’d have to keep pushing the bike at least until I got to the first major bend, where I would no longer be facing straight into the wind.
There was a guardrail at the intersection, and I pushed the bike over to it so it would be close when the wind gusted. I stood there fiddling with my sheep-themed root beer bottle for about a minute, trying to decide if I should search for an AirBnB or a hotel in the town below, and suddenly the wind hit me harder than it had all day. The bike was pushed sideways and back, with both tires skidding on the road – the brake made zero difference – and I was hurled back with it. My butt hit the guardrail immediately, then the bike hit my stomach, then the wind pressed the bike hard into me as though a giant hand was trying to make me the gooey center of a sandwich in a panini-press.
If not for that guardrail – and how close I’d kept it – I would have absolutely been blasted right down the cliff. Assuming the bike missed me, I might have managed to roll to a stop maybe 100 meters down, perhaps without a broken limb. But the bike would definitely be broken in some way that I couldn’t ride it, and my gear would be scattered far and wide. Assuming I could even move, my only option at that point would be to crawl around on the hillside trying to fetch my gear and hope that I could at least find my phone, and barring that, drag myself up to the road and flag down a car.
Luckily: A guardrail.
After about five seconds the wind eased up enough for me to shove the bike outward and hunch over it, and when I looked up from that I noticed a truck had just passed me and was slowing down. The driver had most certainly seen me get slammed against the rail.
It stopped only 10 meters away. I bent forward and shoved the bike slowly up the road, sticking close to the guardrail, and managed to get up alongside the truck. The window came down and a man leaned his head out, and yelled something. The wind was howling, and I yelled back “I’m sorry I can’t hear you over the wind!!”
He paused for a moment, then put his truck in gear and moved it forward, angled to the left, closing the gap between him and the guardrail. This made a little wedge where the wind wasn’t as bad, with me inside it. “This guy knows what he’s doing,” I thought. I gratefully pushed the bike ahead a bit more, drawing up close to the window again.
He leaned out and said, in a fantastic example of deadpan Norwegian humor, “It is a bit windy today.”
I laughed and agreed, and then paused for a moment. I quickly thought to myself: “Okay, so you’ve been out here for at least four hours, and managed to go about three kilometers. There are no hotels, and the AirBnB you stayed at two days ago seems to be the only one available between you and Tórshavn, and it’s another 33 kilometers away. At your current rate it would take you well over an entire day to get there. Your seat mesh is torn, your rain cover is torn, your GPS is gone, your mirror is broken, your battery may be too wet to charge your phone, the only substantial food you have is two slices of pizza, and you’re soaking wet. The wind almost succeeded in murdering you just moments ago and will doubtless try again another ten times before you’re even off this mountain, and it will likely get worse, not better. Oh, and in about four hours it will get dark. This man has an actual truck, with a bed. He is driving the only kind of vehicle that can transport you, and you have not seen any other like it all day.”
I had just done all of Iceland without ever setting foot in a car — for the second time, in fact. But the Faroe Islands was too much for me to handle just now. If I didn’t set a limit I could walk away from, this environment was going to set a limit for me that I couldn’t. It was time to ask a stranger for help.
I grinned and inclined my head back toward the bed of his truck. “I don’t suppose you’d be wiling to give me a lift?”
He immediately nodded and set the parking brake, turned on his hazard lights, and stepped out of the truck. He looked about 35, my height, and in good shape. He was wearing a good rain jacket and pants.
As he opened the tailgate and rummaged around for straps, I brought the bike carefully around to the back. Another car pulled up behind us on the road and an older man got out, in his 50’s with a grizzled face. He smiled at me, traded a few words in Faroese with the first driver, and then pitched in to help lift my bicycle into the truck. We laid it sideways, and as the wind slapped at all of us, the owner of the truck got out a retention strap and looped it through slots in the truck bed, passing it over the bike. Then he cranked a ratchet, pressing the bike down just enough to stop it from moving. I thought for a second that the pressure of the strap might bend the rack or crush some of my possessions, but I dismissed the thought immediately. Those were consequences I would accept.
He shut the tailgate. I thanked the second man, and he waved and returned to his car. Then I climbed into the cab of the truck, said, “Whoooo!!”, and thanked the driver.
“I knew the weather was going to be tough this morning,” I said, “but I had no idea the wind was going to get this bad.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It looks like maybe 30 to 40 meters a second now.”
“Does the wind usually get this bad in September?”
He thought for a while as he negotiated the switchbacks down the mountain. “It’s different each year. We always get storms like this in the fall, sometimes two or three, sometimes ten or fifteen.” His English was halting, but clear. In the back of my head I wondered at the way English with a Norwegian accent sounds more to me like the American accent than the British one. Was that the World War II influence? Or did the American accent converge to a similar sound because it was being learned by people who previously spoke lots of German and Danish and Dutch, during colonial times?
(I asked Rachel, an actual linguist, about this years later, and she said I was onto something with the Danish influence, but I shouldn’t also discount the social influence of powerful and pervasive American media in modern times.)
We talked about a possible destination for me. I said I was headed to an AirBnB in Hósvik. He said he would drive me there. I asked where he was heading before he picked me up. He said Runavik. I said he could just drop me off in Runavik and I could catch a bus since the wind wouldn’t be as bad there, but he insisted on driving me all the way to Hósvik, which was about 30 kilometers out of his way. I thanked him again, trying to convey my earnest gratitude. It was quite possible he was saving my stubborn-ass life.
We chatted about other things. I learned his name was Sonni. He said his family had lived in the Faroes as long as anyone could remember. The earliest mention of his hometown in history books by name was 600 years ago, but people have been there since at least the viking era over 1000 years back.
I could tell he was working hard to come up with questions, and keep up with my American chatterbox style. I slowed down a bit, and let the spattering of the rain and the churning of the wiper blades fill the cab for longer intervals, then offered easy topics. He asked about the weather in San Francisco and I compared the fog that rolls over the Golden Gate to the mist I’d seen on the ocean a few days ago.
And just like that, I was back in Hósvik. The whole ride took about 25 minutes. Sonni helped me lower the bike to the ground, and I shook his hand and asked for a photo to put in my album. I offered him money but he smiled and turned it down, so I thanked him several more times.
As his truck pulled away I looked around, and a weird feeling of disorientation crept over me, as though I wasn’t really here. How could I be? Mere moments ago I’d been on the side of a mountain near a place it had taken me the entire day to get to. Had I teleported? Well, yes. It was that “broken line” feeling of car travel. I hadn’t experienced it since the shuttle from the Iceland airport over two months ago, and now, I could acutely feel the unnatural detachment from my surroundings that modern life usually grants me all the time.
How strange.
After I checked into the AirBnB I plundered my remaining food, which was almost nothing. I ate several handfuls of gummi bears, the two slices of leftover pizza, a fistful of peanuts, and a Prince Polo bar. That was everything I had, except for more peanuts, and my stomach didn’t want those. Actually it was a full-body thing: I wanted more protein and calories but I was too physically exhausted to eat.
I sat in the dim living room for a while, making a few notes about the day on my miraculously dry laptop. I think the only other time I’d experienced 40 meter-per-second wind was sticking my hand out the window of a car. And that was really not the same.
I had another day to get back to the ferry terminal, but I had to admit, at this point I would have traded that day for an extra one in Denmark, where the weather was bound to be entirely different.
By the time I passed the pizza joint up the road it had started and stopped raining twice. The joint itself was closed. Glad I bought stuff the previous night!
I crossed over the bridge just beyond to the town of Oyrarbakki, then stopped at a gas station. They sold two-part epoxy which would have been a much better material for repairing my mirror and headphones, but I had already used the superglue. Oh well! Nothing on the shelves was inspiring, but I grabbed some peanuts and a chocolate bar anyway.
I doubt there were ever covered wagons in the Faroe Islands. They’d never get up any of the hills.
I doubt there were ever covered wagons in the Faroe Islands. They’d never get up any of the hills.
At the checkout counter I noticed this headline on a local paper. It was about the recent slaughter of dolphins during the yearly hunt called “the grind” that the Faroese consider a tradition. Over 1400 dolphins had been killed this year, which was causing an international backlash. The massacre had occurred in a fjord just a few kilometers away from where I was standing.
Here’s the best I can do to puzzle out a translation:
Sunday night’s massive killing, which is the largest in our history, has put the Faroe Islands in the crosshairs of the international media. It is worse than the previous massive killing in the Faroe Islands, but there are also several examples of poachers letting large groups pass, precisely because it would have been overkill to slaughter them.
I was not at all surprised by the defensive tone of the reporter.
On the way out of the little town I accidentally missed a left turn, and rode up a big slope alongside the hill for no reason. Whoops!
For the next couple of hours I rode north. Rain and sunlight passed over the road multiple times. I put on music by Joe Hisashi and reveled in it.
I arrived at the coastal town of Eiði, a picturesque collection of houses on rolling hills, dominated by a church with an orderly graveyard tacked onto the side. I went to the one store in town and parked there, then rambled around inside for a while trying to find things I actually wanted to eat. I bought a pear and a banana, plus a little box of chocolate milk. The town cafe was closed, but that was alright: I wasn’t hungry enough for a full meal.
I poked up and down a few streets, then went up towards the church and looked down the road towards the campsite. I was expecting it to have quite a few trailers and RVs in it, like I’d seen in the campsite across the bay, but there were only a few. It looked very exposed to the wind, and I didn’t fancy the idea of setting up a tent in the rain and having it nearly ripped out of the ground some time at night.
I decided to continue up over the pass and get to Gjógv. It meant that I wouldn’t have a day to spend climbing Slættaratindur, the tallest peak in Faroe, but on the other hand, the peak was lost in cloud cover now and would almost definitely be lost in cloud cover tomorrow as well. Might as well skip it.
Before leaving town I stopped at the little Fisk And Kips wagon parked by the church. The wind was blasting all around and I had a hard time finding a place to rest the bike, but eventually located a sheltered alcove built into a set of public bathrooms nearby. I hunkered down in there to eat the meal, and it was totally delicious. The chef had given me four huge chunks of fish which seemed excessive. Maybe he knew how hungry bike tourists are in general? I could feel my body drawing the heat out of the food as I ate it.
Then I started uphill, due east, towards the base of Slættaratindur. The wind was at my back and seemed to shove me up the road. I barely had to pedal as the highway squiggled for a bit, past sheep laying low in the grass. Soon I reached a plateau where I could look northwest out to sea, and see two rock formations called Risin og Kellingin, or the Giant and the Witch.
As the legend goes, these are the remains of two creatures from Iceland, who came to try and steal the Faroe islands and haul them back to Iceland with a giant rope. But the task was too difficult and as they struggled the sun rose, turning them to stone.
A bit farther up the road, I came across a strange formation of shells mixed into dirt. It was as though someone had collected an enormous quantity of shells, then heaped dirt on top of them, and the dirt had eroded on one side causing the shells to spill out.
What in the world was this? An early settler trash midden? Why so far from the water? Is it the effort of a farmer or a soil scientist, trying to enhance the topsoil or provide nourishment to animals? I could not figure it out. Why would shells be mixed with fully-formed soil, 300 meters up from sea level?
My best theory was that it was cheap reinforcement for the soil used to shore up the highway. Perhaps some time in the future I would find an answer.
After some long pauses to snack and empty my bladder, I wiggled my way to the top of the pass, at the highest point of the road. Slættaratindur loomed up into the mist to the north of me. The wind made the clouds move alarmingly fast.
Have a picnic here at the highest pass in the Faroe Islands!
I sat around for a bit, admiring the mountain, and then began the descent. At a fork in the road I went left. Below me to the west I could see the town of Funningur, but my destination was north.
Just past the fork a gust of wind battered the bike and my side mirror snapped off. As soon as it hit the pavement, the wind tried to scoot it along over the edge of the road. “Hey! I need that!” I yelled at the wind, and chased comedically after the mirror as it scooted away. I scooped it up just before it sailed down towards Funningur, and jammed it into a bag. Perhaps I could glue it on again tomorrow.
The wind shuffled a bit, then began to push at my back again, moving me upward over another small mountain pass. Then the road was just a long gentle coast downward to Gjógv, and I had to apply my brakes constantly because the wind kept speeding me up like a poltergeist intent on murder.
“Whoo-eee!” I shouted, but in my mind I also thought, “I hope the wind isn’t blowing this way tomorrow, or going back up over this pass is going to suck.”
As soon as I swung the bike into the town, I aimed for a restaurant. It was late in the day but they were happy to feed me. I ate a good meal plus dessert, and used the wifi to figure out a riding schedule for the next few days.
On the wall I noticed this cool old map. I was in the town in the upper right.
I also did some shopping for a new jacket, but left the item in the electronic cart, since there was no point in ordering it yet. Even if I had my nephew prepare me a package for DHL to send, where would he send it? Copenhagen? I’d be there only a few days before flying home.
I went from the restaurant to my AirBnB, and unpacked my gear all over the dining room so things could dry out. The bike was dripping on the floor so I laid a few towels under it. While I was fumbling in the kitchen I noticed these cool glass drawers:
I was tired, but felt the need to settle down before crawling under the covers. I opened the laptop and rattled off a few notes.
An interesting thought: There are car campers, and there are backpackers. As a cycle tourist, I carry an amount of gear somewhere between these two groups. But it skews toward the backpacker, because unlike the car camper I still have to use my own energy to move all my stuff around. I pay a price for additional weight, just not as high a price as a backpacker.
My biggest extravagance? Definitely my camera. With the extra lens and the battery, it adds 3.7kg – eight pounds – to my load.
If I had all the relevant statistics, I could probably come up with an accurate estimate of how much time I have lost from every day of biking, by spending additional energy pedaling up hills because of the added weight of the camera. My completely unsubstantiated back-of-the-envelope calculation, sitting there in the gloom of a cement-walled house on the windy shore of an island in the North Atlantic, put the cost at an extra 15 minutes out of an 8-hour day, or about 3% of my time on the bike.
Considering the fact that this extra 3 percent of my time on a hill would also be spent looking at beautiful terrain and listening to a podcast, that’s a pretty good tradeoff…
