Featured Europe Down

I've adjusted the map to go west of the Oslo fjord and added your location as a waypoint. I think there may be a limit of 10 waypoints on any set of directions as the 'add destination' option disappeared. I'll have to break the route up, hopefully only by country. I don't think My Maps was built for quite this much detail. It a shame you can't colour code different routes, too. Alternatively, I'll take a closer look at MyRouteApp and see if that'll work for sharing the trip. I was planning to use that software eventually anyway.

 

I'll take all the good advice I can get, thanks, Erling. I suspect anyone who's interested enough in this thread to be following it will be interested too. It may even spur people to get on their own bikes and head for the fjords. You've certainly helped bring it alive for me. As I've mentioned before, I'm capturing offline all the information people provide and it will all go in to the planning process.

This week I'm going to look at the route in a bit more detail to get an idea of timing and costs, including ferries etc. I'll also be looking beyond Norway, or at least south, and giving some thought as to which general direction to take. Westerly, via the Netherlands, Belgium and France, or down through Germany and Switzerland.

 

@Havit Pin this one please, Wayne.

This thread is about a trip a friend and I are planning from Nordkapp (Norway) to Gibraltar. That's Europe from top to bottom..

Current expectation is that 2022 will be planning and preparation with the trip taking place in 2023, but nothing is fixed yet.

The link below is for a map showing the evolving route and places we either want to visit, or that have been recommended to us.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1IlxEpq7j4_79l1OmrYaeI0gSjXe9-p1y&usp=sharing

All advice, ideas and suggestions are welcome, whether that's good roads, interesting locations, helpful websites, or anything else you can think of! What doesn't go straight on to the map ends up in a file I'm putting together that will all feed in to the planning process, so all posts count.

Lots more to come in the weeks and months ahead. Thanks to everyone who's commented, provided useful information or offered to meet/put us up on the way. Bikers are the best people, aren't they?

 

Update: I had another look at MyRouteApp last night. I'm already a subscriber but I think I know a bit better now what I'm doing with it now after watching a few of their tutorial videoa. In theory I can export the Google map I've been using (which I have) and import in to MRA, but when I try to open it all get is an endless spinning circle on the screen. Maybe I've got too many routes, waypoints or POIs, I dunno. Looks like I'll have to recreate it manually. It'll be worth it in the long run.

Saturday I'll be catching up with my travelling buddy as he hasn't seen any of this yet. Sometimes if you want something done you've just got to get on with it yourself.

If anyone has any tips on using MRA for planning very long routes do let me know.

 

Cheers for the advice. The tutorial mentions the necessity of ensuring waypoints are actually on the road. I can see how it might be annoying if they're not hit while en route. I've been around that loop before, figuratively and literally.

I spent some time in MRA last night, recreating the route manually from My Maps. I've been building up the route one waypoint at a time so far. I did consider adding the final destination (Gibraltar) but I wondered whether that would be more cluttered and awkward to manipulate for such a long route. Swings and roundabouts, perhaps.

Most of my waypoints are places people (mostly @Erling so far) have recommended to ride through but they're adding up quickly. I just hope the number doesn't cause any issues like it did on My Maps, which has decided to lose the last section on the Norwegian leg, incidentally, so it's definitely on the way out.

I need to check how to share the MRA map/route this weekend and replace the Google link I posted previously.

I've got the gold membership and I'm going to research some of the routes from the group and any of the official MRA ones. Still keen to get recommendations for the forum, though!

 

I've moved the route from MyMaps in to MyRoute-app. If anyone wants to view it, here's the link:

https://www.myrouteapp.com/en/social/route/5517078?mode=share

You shouldn't need an account as the privacy is set to 'public'. I'll be deleting the MyMaps version in the next day or two.

 

Cheers! I'm hoping to come to a decision/agreement with my riding mate this weekend as to which general direction we'll take south from Norway. We can't zig-zag across Europe as it'll take too much time so, do we find Spain via the Netherlands (hallo @Vulpes) and France (bonjour @Hubaxe), or Germany and Switzerland, or some other way? Choices, choices.

I know we've got TTF members to the west but I'm not sure about the German side. Perhaps they all ride BMWs...

 

Update: Today I sat down with my riding buddy and brought him up to speed with the plans so far. As well as getting his agreement to the Norwegian leg, I was waiting to speak to him about what to do after northern Europe. We've decided to plan a route (roughly) down through Germany, Switzerland, perhaps a bit of Italy, and along the French Mediterranean coast before crossing the Pyrenees to Spain.

Both of us have ridden around bits of Belgium and the Netherlands, and I've ridden down through France before, so Germany will be a new experience. Not that we have any idea about what's there, or where to go. But that's part of the fun of planning the trip.
We've also set a tentative expectation for when the trip will take place. We both have various committments this year so we've pencilled in June/July 2023. It would be nice to arrive at the North Cape for the summer solstice but we'll see how it works out.

As for getting to the start point, the current thinking (subject to more research) is to maybe to ride to Hull and catch a ferry to Zebrugge, or perhaps Newcastle to Amsterdam. From there we ride north to either Copenhagen or Frederikshavn in Denmark and catch a ferry to Oslo. Then from Oslo we can take another ship all the way up to Lakselv. After that it's a 120 mile dash up to Nordkapp.

 

More sound advice, thanks. Everything is still very flexible at the moment and the solstice idea is just a whim, really. Perhaps next year people will be venturing abroad again a bit more but point taken.

 

Aha, I didn’t know about that. I’ll have a proper look later but thanks for the info.

 

I don't know why, I though this was going to be a ferry. I've just realised, assuming I'm reading the google translation correctly, it's actually a truck that carries the bikes to Lakselv. I guess that means we will have to get ourselves there separately. Flying looks like the easiest option, although we'd be there way ahead of the bike. I haven't managed to work out how long the truck journey takes.

The site also seems to talk about transport from north to south. You'd think they would go the direction as well but it's not clear how that works (to me). I also can't actually see anything mentioning Lakselv...

 

Some more poring over the map today, this time to look at the most efficient way to get ourselves from our start point in Yorkshire to Nordkapp. One possibility I'm exploring is:

Home - Newcastle (ride: 130m 2hr 15min)
Newcastle - Amsterdam (ferry: 15hr 30min)
Amsterdam - Eemshaven (ride: 155m 2hr 30min)
Eemshaven - Kristiansand (ferry: 18hr)
Kristiansand - Oslo (ride: 200m. 3hr 30min)
Oslo - Lakselv (details tbc)
Lakselv - Nordkapp (120m. 3hr 30m)

Those times are just the journeys. There's be all sorts of faffing about getting on and off ferries, for example.

The aim is to minimise the bike miles for the starting liaison. There are a few alternatives though, like the ferry from Hull to Zebrugge, which is a shorter trek from home (86 miles) and a shorter ferry journey but means riding an extra 126 miles to Eemshaven. Overall it's 35 miles further, which isn't much, so definitely an option.