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.

Søgne

Weather: warm, sunny, ~26°; rainy in the evening

Kilometers on bike: 0 km

First time I have slept through the night without problems. I have breakfast with Jane, Trond and their kids. Their boy, Sander, is hiding behind the entry tarp of the tent and loudly singing the same songs over and over again… Very amusing, obviously drives his parents mad, because he obviously sings in the car as well. After the breakfast, I help them getting their stuff packed and I say goodbye to them. Meanwhile Stefan, Thorsten and Katja break their camp as well. They want to go to Kristiansand and take a ferry. I give them the hint with the “cheaper” ferry to Hanstholm.

My neighbours from Bergen will leave today, too. They are on their way to visit some friends. I have some smalltalk with them and the woman advises me to go to Lista, because it’s more beautiful than in the Sørland. And I could get a new saddle on my way through Mandal. A while later, her husband returns and says there will be a partial solar eclipse between 10:30 and 11:30. Because we don’t have those special glasses to directly observe it, he improvises an observationstand from branches, dark plastic foil with a hole. When you now hold a white paper beneath it, you can see a small sun and how the moon begins to cover it. It’s very small, so he gets the idea to get his binoculars. Now we get a bigger picture of the sun and the moon. Everyone is happy.

One after another the other campers leave from “my” meadow. After a while I am the only one left, resting in the cool shadows of the wood. Well, there will certainly some other arrive today late afternoon or in the evening. My sunburn burns like fire. I avoid getting too much sun over the day. Not as easy when you’re doing an outdoor trip.

Later on, more campers arrive. With them, a young couple from Rheine, Jörg and Andrea. They drove through parts of Norway with a rented caravan. On their way, they had a major breakdown: the brake tube burst. Gladly they were on a parking lot when that happened. A day before, they were in the mountains… We have a nice time and they got chocolate!

An older but very fit looking couple on bikes arrive. Lightly packed and we wonder if they are Germans. Somebody told me, you can always recognise a German biker because he got Ortlieb backrollers. Well, they also got a lightweight Vaude-tent… I go and check. They are from the Netherlands. Obviously they are taking the same route. We talk about optimising baggage and maps. They got a nice bike map of the Nordsjøvei, which I intend to get from a bookshop the other day.

My evening meal is not that tasty. I combine a dried forest mushroom soup with Basmatirice to get me an Outdoor Forest Mushroom Risotto. Well, not that tasty as it sounds.

Back to Jörg and Andrea. We chat and they show me their vacation photos on their laptop. Outside the caravan it slowly begins to rain. During the night, the rain becomes stronger. I guess I prefer the pelt down of the rain on my tent over the drunken singing of my Danish tentneighbours. I don’t sleep much that night.