Before we set off to Norway I liked eating the odd steep hill with my bike tyres, chewing them up as I pedalled, spitting out tarmac behind me. Norway has made me revise my taste for, or relationship with, hills. They are especially testing when they keep appearing in front of you when you’re least expecting them because your map interestingly misses out the contours for bumps under 800 metres. One is not amused when this happens. I knew Norway wasn’t going to be a piece of cake but cycling up some of these mountains is like being force fed a bakery worth of cake.
In our first week in Norway we had our biggest piece of Nordic mountain cake, a 1400 metre behemoth of a climb onto the Hardanger plateau, 100 miles east of Bergen. With a wind chill factor at the top that would make even Ray Mears consider wearing an extra pair of long johns, this was going to be a tough, over cooked cake, of a mountain. Just before the summit we decided to find shelter for a camping spot as driving rain turned to snow blizzard. We found an ideal spot in a ghost town of off season ski cabins. Under the roof of a porch for one of these log cabins we set about creating our humble abode for the night. Using our bivi bags and wearing enough thermal clothes for us to resemble the Michelin man, we got some well deserved kip. But as morning arrived we saw our path over the plateau disappear as 6 inches of snow had fallen over night. We were stuck near the highest point and the weather was deteriorating. We ate our last rations as we stuck it out an extra day, making a fire to keep us warm. The next day when the blizzards had calmed down enough we made the final push over the plateau. If I didn’t already have them, that experience would have put hairs on my chest. We loved every minute.