Ah, I've gone to...

Today I went to Hell (still need to come back).

This is probably a good place to talk about the down sides of the trip, it's not all roses (well most of it is).

Apparently peak season isn't until July, so my fear of being unable to find hotel rooms is sort of unfounded; but as I travel further north finding available accommodation is becoming harder as hotels become more sparse. I've generally been booking one day in advance. The last few days I've had to plan two to three days in advance to locate hotels at suitably spaced distances, as there are wide expanses of nothing but villages with just houses (no shops either).

For the planning perspective availability of hotel food is the main criteria as in most places there isn't anything but the hotel! I had thought I could rent properties or huts, but the problem with this is you need to go and buy food from the shops (which may not be local) and the issue with a motorbike is lack of any room for this. I made one mistake where I rented a house, then found there was nowhere to eat, even the local garage shop was shut, so I had to fall back on emergency supplies.

I've been alternating between nice hotels and budget ones. Generally the budget ones have been quite good, the last one being a case in point but the location was basically a Shell garage fast food joint.

Finding food at lunch time can also be fun, if you are lucky there will be a large restaurant next to a garage, if not the garages sometimes serve hot food. But, the garages are also fairly spaced out, you can easily drive for 20 miles or more without seeing one. At last night's Shell garage the food was fairly abysmal, which is the exception.

I'm not travelling as far each day as I'd hoped, something like 250 km (150 miles) to 300 km (186 miles), which will typically take about four to five hours. (and add in time for rest stops). Occasionally I'll throw in a longer day if the weather looks OK.

Spending five hours a day riding is not without its aches and pains, the posterior sometimes starts to ache somewhat after four hours.

The temperature is typically about 10 C in the morning, rising to 15 C at noon (if you are lucky). I have lots of thin layers of clothing and recently I had to use two layers whilst riding into a biting 10 C wind for hours on end.

For the extremities, I made the very wise decision to get heated handlebar grips fitted for the trip. However, I now realise I always ride with one finger covering the front brake (right hand) and clutch (left hand); so these fingers get cold! It is possible to force myself to grip with all fingers but this seems unnatural after year's of ingrained riding like this. Heated grips in the rain are wonderful!

I think my feet may be the biggest future issue. I have warm socks and good boots but these started to feel cold the other day.

I've been fairly lucky with the rain/temperature combination, I can imagine if it's chucking it down on a cold day it's going to be fairly miserable, another reason not to be doing monster distances.

In some ways I was lucky that my first full day in Norway over the mountain pass to Lysebotn it was raining and fairly cold. This dialled me in to the level of riding circumspection required for the conditions, and it was good to be exposed to the bad conditions first.