Road bike tours in Fjord Norway - Fjord Norway's dramatic scenery for road cyclists
There are worse places to meet than the terrace of the time-honoured Sandven Hotel in Norheimsund. Terje Ljones, Arve Øyri and Olav Byrkjeland - all members of the Hardanger Cycling Club - are stirring their coffee cups and waiting for the visit from Germany. They are wearing smart blue and green club jerseys, their main sponsors are a salmon farm and a hydroelectric power station. The three cyclists look out over the Hardangerfjord - the "king of the fjords", as they say in Norway. And what they see is incredibly beautiful: gently rolling mountain pastures, the northernmost apple orchards in Europe, which transform the banks of the fjord into a sea of white and pink flowers in late spring, and lush green pastures scattered with wooden houses painted in dark red, white or yellow. Above all this, framed by dark forests, rocks tower into the sky - sometimes jagged and striking, as in the Dolomites, then again round like volcanic cones. And to crown the "king", the ice of the Folgefonna glacier glistens in the morning sun far above.
The Hardangerfjord and its many branching tributaries are lined with barely travelled national roads that are sometimes as narrow as a double bed. And which offer views around almost every bend that almost knock visitors like my mate Martin and me off their pedals. When we meet the guys from the Hardanger Sykkelklubb on the terrace, we already have two day trips in the Hordaland region behind us. Two days on which we often found ourselves babbling to ourselves like senile men: "Wow, dude!" or "That's awesome!" or even "Old Swede!" - which could hardly be more stupid when you're travelling in the Norwegian fjords. But somehow our enthusiasm just had to come out unfiltered.
Do Terje, Arve and Olav actually know what a paradise they live and cycle in? "Oh yes," says Terje, continuing to stir his coffee, "we don't know any different." Arve doesn't really know what to say either: "Yes, we do have a lot of nature here. But that's normal for us," he says. And then, as if to apologise, he adds: "But the weather here isn't that great."
We can't disagree with him. Fjord Norway is not exactly a sunshine paradise. Bergen, the capital of Hordaland, is even considered the rainiest city in Europe. When we ask the friendly lady at the tourist information centre in Rosendal for the weather forecast two days earlier, she is beaming all over her face and rattles off the predicted values for the coming day: "There will be a few showers in the morning, then it will be clear to cloudy, with a little drizzle in the early afternoon, but later the sun will shine until the evening." What would tend to plunge cyclists in southern Europe into depression is cause for celebration in the north. It's just a shame that the forecast turns out to be wrong and we end up pedalling through the pouring rain for five hours the next day ...
You can download the entire article and the GPS data for these tours below:
- Tour 1: Sykkelklubb house tour (113 kilometres, 1,600 vertical metres, max. 11 % gradient)
- Tour 2: Panoramic tour (90 kilometres, 1,170 metres in altitude, max. 12 % gradient)
- Tour 3: Bike & Boat (95 kilometres, 1,320 metres in altitude, max. 12 % gradient)
- Tour 4: Glacier tour (114 km, 1,900 metres in altitude, max. 23 % gradient)
Downloads:
PDF: Fjord-Norway
GPS data: Fjord-Norway
