Mandal - Sjølingstad - Vigeland - Reme - Spangereid - Gitlevåg - Lyngdal

Weather: warm, sunny, ~25°; a bit hotter later; thunderstorm in the evening/night and colder

Kilometers on bike: 55 km

Very quick packaging in the morning, last talks to the dudes and dudettes from Gelsenkirchen and I am on my way to the city centre. Nice town, but is it really worth a side-trip? Sunday morning - and Norway seems to be dead. No people on the street. I head to the house of Gustav and Emanuel Vigeland, now a museum, but I intend to follow my route again and go on.

I come to a supermarket, which is open on sundays. Nice! I fill up my stock on biscuits, chocolate and juice. Hmmmh, I wonder if all Norwegians are late risers. Obviosuly not. My route heads straight through a golf course. Plenty of older people here. Well, suits the normal tourist in Sørland.

I arrive at a junction, I now can decide to take Gamle Postveien (the Old Postway), a gravel road, or an ordinary road up to Sjølingstad. I take the latter. According to the map it should be less hilly. You can visit an old woolmanufacture complete with school etc. in Sjølingstad - from the old times when entrepreneurs still got a social conscience. A lot of car and caravan tourists are already swarming around the houses, so I just have a break and decide to save myself the visit.

I am cycling along some nice lakes and in Tredal I am joining the main road E39 and follow it to Vigeland. The first thing I see is a statue of a cleric (forgot to note the name), according to the statue, his motto is or better has been “Ora et Labora”. Well, to each it’s own.

I go through the town, pushing my bike and enjoy the silence. Another dead town on a Sunday (if you don’t count the cars on the main road). In a small street behind the church I see a Norsk Skogkatt sitting near a blue door. She’s obviously waiting to get inside, but I guess her human family is not there. She looks a bit pissed and when I try to make some photographs, she is hissing and behaving not like a lady. Finally I get my pictures, but she’s still not in the mood for stroking.

I am following the regional route out of town to Snik. Needless to say, heavy traffic. Obviously half of Norway uses the good weather to get into the wilds. Along the road there are small beaches for bathing in the “fjord”. Despite the gear problem, I fight myself over a lot of climbs to Reme. I really miss the nine middle gears, would make things a lot easier. It’s exhausting, so I sometimes decide to push the bike uphill. Well, exhausting, too.

No real outdoor holidays without a Stöngifoss. In Reme, some houses, moles for fishers and a nice beach, I take the opportunity for having a longer break and take a swim in the North Sea. The water is crystal clear and warm, really warm. Somehow I am feeling I am at the beach in Spain. I am swimming and enjoying the water for half an hour and then I ride into the direction of Spangereid.

There should be a viking grave (and a viking information centre) in Spangereid, but cannot find it. I think about going further south (10 to 12km) and visit the Lindesnes Lighthouse (which would mean, I have to return the same way later), but somehow I got a bad feeling about it. I trust my gut feelings and continue on my route to Lyngdal. Later on, I am glad I did this.

Uphill horror! That’s really hard with my broken gear. After I reach the bridge over the Lenefjord at Jåsund, I should have reached the first “peak”. But after Gitlevåg it’s getting worse. I push my bike uphill for four kilometres. It’s hard work, but could at least be a bit easier with a nice sideway along the road. Every 30 seconds a car drives by. Very annoying. After a long while, I reach the top. And now down again! I put on my helmet, check the luggage and ride down on a crazy wind. 50 km/h and more again, and this for a distance of five kilometres down to Lyngdal.

I pass by a camping site, which looks tremendously crowded, and another one, which name doesn’t appeal to me (Lyngalbibelcamp) before I reach the campsite in Kvavik, right before a small forest at the shore of the Lyngdalsfjord. A bit less then thirty minutes after my tent is pitched, a big thunderstorm announces its coming with loud thunderclap and flashes. I go down to the beach (roughly 150m behind my tent) and I see a big black cloudformation come into the fjord, flashes flashing, loud thunder rolling in from the sea. What a view! The Darkness is coming!

Back at the tent and despite heavy rain, I prepare a tea, this time well deserved enriched with some ten year old Ardbeg. I also cook: basmati rice with onions, raisins and almonds, spiced with Marroccan tajine spices. The tea and the meal do me well. After extensive listening to Svartsot and Cultus Ferox, I finally slumber away.

In the mid of the night, the rain is still heavily pelting down on my tent, I awake because my arms feel wet. Ok, obviously the sandy ground cannot cope with all the water coming down from above. Part of it flows between the floor(?) of the inner tent and the protective tarp on the ground. Well, I am now glad I took the Tarp’n’Travel with me, I get it out and place it into the inner tent. At least somewhat dry for the rest of the night.

Søgne - Røsstad - Harkmark - Tregde - Mandal

Weather: warm, sunny, ~26°; I guess a bit hotter later during the day

Kilometers on bike: 43 km

Thanks to my Danish neighbours I don’t want to get out of my sleeping bag. A long while later, I am finally on my feet. I pack my belongings and dry the tent in the sunshine. I just wanted to get into my travel clothes, when I discovered a black point on my left foot. Hmmmh, what’s that? It’s tick time! My first tick after a very long time. Ok, operation. Getting my swiss army knife, it has tweezers. It takes a while. It’s a bit difficult to get the tick into the right position. I press with my fingers around the location where it has biten and try to get the head. I have to press my flesh hard down to the bone to see a part of the head. Finally I get it done, it’s out. I am somehow glad I got a vaccination against tickbites this year. Now I just have to make that no red ring appears around the bite otherwise I have to visit a doc real fast.

Andrea and Jörg wish me good travels and leave. I am eager to see if my self-fixed saddle will hold. I go to Tangvall, a part of Søgne. That’s where the town centre and places to shop are. The saddle holds! So I go into a bookshop and get my one of those excellent route maps: Sørnorske Hjulgleder - Nordsjøruta Vest. Afterwards I stock up on food and drinks, because it’s Saturday. Somehow I lost the feeling for time.

Then I am on my way to Røsstad. Smaller slopes and hills are on the way. On a steeper one, suddenly my gear does make problems. When I put strength into my tread, the chain jumps from the middle chainring of the crank and the chain hooks into the front derailleur. This nearly leads to me falling to the ground. Not nice when your are on the road (no cycle-path available), to the left is the traffic and to the right is goes down… a lot of few metres. Well, I quickly check the chain and gear, but I cannot see anything wrong. Everything’s looks fine. Hmmmh, when I go on, the problem is still there. Did the wind something to my gear yesterday evening, when it topped my bike over? Will have a look later. Now I cannot use nine of my 27 gears. Sadly, the most important ones. What a fuck.

I am not seeing any other bikers. A big part of the route follows the regional road, on which every 30 to 60 seconds a car drives by. That’s not fun and after a while stretches my nerves, because you have to cycle fully concentrated to not become a traffic obstacle, especially when you get uphill. You can admire the beautiful scenery only during a break. That’s a shame.

A bit worn out I reach Harkmark, where I have a longer break at the old church from 1613 in longhouse style with an Iron Age stone circle right in front of the church. Nice, finally something archaeological! Ok, I go on and the route follows the road along the coast to Kige. I don’t see much of the North Sea. A bit disappointing. According to the map, I now should follow a gravel road. My expections from Icelandic gravel roads are not fulfilled. I take a longer break at a beautiful situated lake, which even isn’t marked on the map. I sit on a private mole and enjoy the silence.

I continue to Mandal. One last big climb before Mandal, prepared with a lot of smaller ones of course. The ongoing up and down combined with heavy traffic is getting on my nerves. I am riding down to Mandal with 50 km/h through the slopes, my brakes are certainly hot. Certainly I am astonishing a few car drivers behind me, because I use the road to the fullest (and they shouldn’t go faster than 50 as well).

I am arriving at Sandnes Camping, a one star camp site, but so far the cheapest (from a price point of view!) I have been to, and despite the price very nice and enough comfort for me. The camp site is directly next to the Mandalselva, a big river.

I meet five mountainbikers from Gelsenkirchen, which are travelling with a very big caravan attached to their car. They also had high hopes for biking in Norway, but they say Norway isn’t gerat for real mountainbiking, because it’s too rocky. They have been to a bike parc somewhere in the north, where two of them attained some injuries through an accident. Gladly, they really had luck.

I check my gear and try to finetune it. To no avail. The problem won’t go away. Sigh. I go to “bed” early and sleep like a stone.