Cycle tour day 26

We found a place to set up camp at around two am this morning. Shortly after that, the wind started.

It was possible that we were the furthest north tent campers in all of Europe. It was unsurprisingly very cold. What we did not expect was the wind. We had set up camp on a fairly flat hilltop, which only amplified the problem.

It was horrible, my tent was flapping from side to side, each peg and pole pulled in ways they were never designed for. It only got worse from there. Making sure my tent didn’t collapse on me plunging me into the arctic rain and cold was a constant job. Holding up and adjusting poles, securing pegs where I could. It was not enough. My tent was operating well beyond what it was designed for. After a few hours I abandoned my tent and ran over to Daniel’s. I met dad there, who had had to do the same a while before.

When we left Daniel’s tent in the morning, what we found was a mess. Dad’s tent had one of the poles snap, collapsing it down. One of my poles had come loose of it’s socket and had torn a gaping gash right down the side of my tent. My bags from inside my tent had been strewn all over the hilltop. Luckily we found most of them, though a few of them we couldn’t track down.

The wind slowed down a tiny bit in the morning, letting us pack up our tents and get underway. We were heading for the town where we will be getting our ferry tomorrow. Though we only went twenty kilometres, it may have been one of the hardest twenty of my life. The crosswind wind was so powerful that we had to lean our bikes several degrees to the side in order to not fall over. The hills were so steep that we were going slower than walking pace. We made it to the spot we camped yesterday, we just have to roll a short way downhill to the harbour tomorrow morning. The boat leaves at six am. I am so tired. We made it though.

Dist: ~20 km