Helo, Matthew,

Thanks for creating and running such a great website. I was delighted to find it.

A friend I are trying to tour (cycling and camping) in every country Europe (22 so far) and plan to do a ride in Norway this year. We will be arriving in Oslo on the bus from Hamburg on the evening of 7 June and then have 7 days before our return bus from Oslo.

I did a couple of rides in Western Norway (including Bergen to Hammerfest) in the 1980s but I don’t remember much of the riding (the scenery created fantastic memories, of course) except the unpleasantness of some of the tunnels and having to ride through driving snow at one point. So, we need some advice.

1. We could take the overnight train to Bergen on 7 June and then ride back to Oslo, but would rather get straight on the bikes that evening. So is there any strong reason (like prevailing Westerlies?) to do the tour Bergen-Oslo instead?

2. Given that we will be starting on 7 or 8 June and, as you have warned, Rallarvegen is going to be impassible, how much riding will we miss overall through having to take the train? Would we miss so much of the wilder part of the route that we might as well take the southern route instead?

3. We will be riding Airnimal folding bikes with 47-507 tyres. We have done a fair amount of gravel riding – although mostly on road – elsewhere in Europe on these; on your ride grading scale, we are happy with 5-6 but don’t like doing much at 7-8. Would any parts of the route (northern or southern) be likely to be force us to walk (excluding because of heavy snow)?

4. Are there GPX files to go with your useful video description of the routes?

Cheers,
Roddy