The Second “Summit”…

The wind howled throughout the night, making any attempt at sleep, well near impossible… At one point I cracked an eyelid to see daylight streaming through a chink in the curtains, and got up to take a look outside… Yep, dawn seemed to have broken… I looked at my watch to check the time and was amazed to see that it was a few minutes before 4.00am…

Getting ready to Summit again... You can't keep a good man down...!!

The sun had risen at 3.15am and it was light enough outside to read the road-signs a few hundred metres away… With a groan I got back under the duvets and tried to fall asleep again, but my efforts were in vain…

My mind was wide awake, and urging my body to catch up to it…! I staggered around, turning on the stove to try and get some heat into the little cabin, and then did a stupid thing…!! I splashed water on my face…!!

It was one of those quick movements you do without thinking: You know, tap on, hands go under the stream and head comes down, then before the brain can get a message to the face to warn it, hands fly up and water meets face…

Lights went on in the nearby cabins, curtains were drawn back and faces peered out to see who had been murdered… My blood-curdling scream of surprise had shattered the still of the early morning… I decided not to go outside and apologise, as I feared that at least thirty pairs of steel-capped biker boots would rain down upon me…

Instead I stood rooted to the spot, pinching my cheeks to get some blood circulating through them again, and checking to see that the hands doing the pinching actually belonged to me… Needless to say, the rest of my body came to life real quick… Probably at the thought of getting the same treatment that my face had received…!!

Simone Fazio, who had ridden through Russia from Italy to get here, staggers from his cabin to bid me farewell...

I dried my face, put my balaclava on, and shoved my hands down the front of my long johns to warm them up… Second mistake of the day…!! Another yell escaped my lips, and a  few “Mama Mia’s” came from the Italian cabins… I am sure I heard groans from Simone in the cabin next door…

I packed all my gear and then as quietly as I could, began loading it onto the bike… Clouds scudded across the sky above the fjord, blown by the stiff breeze… Simone staggered out of his cabin, wearing a pixie cap and peered at me through his black-framed glasses…

“You leaving…? Now..?” he said looking all around him, as if to make sure he wasn’t dreaming…

“Yeah, I’m going back up to Nordkapp again…!! I feel that I must see it one more time…!! It’s hard to explain…!!”

“I know what you mean… I am going to ride around this area today, and maybe go back up again as well…!! I will leave tomorrow to ride back to Italy…!!”

We hugged and said our goodbyes, and I promised to make contact with him if I spent time in Italy, which was a distinct possibility, as I had received invites from half a dozen people there, in the last few days…!!

I stood up on the pegs as I rode down the rocky path to the reception and out onto the road leading back up to the Nordkapp beacon… There was no traffic about, which suited me perfectly… All I wanted to see was the bleak and beautiful hills and valleys, and not be bothered by cars or people… Yesterday was the culmination of a day’s ride… Today was for me and the Big Fella…

We needed to savour what we had achieved, without the hubbub of other tourists…

Back to the bleak windswept road that leads to the Nordkapp...

That wicked wind of yesterday still lurked about, waiting to exact a harsh price from the unwary, but we rode with the confidence of those who have been tested and had bested the elements before, and but for a few wobbles, we made it back to the top without much fuss…

The Big Fella taunts the wind, 20 kms short of the beacon... He can be such a tease...!! Not sure where he gets it from...!!

On the way up I passed two cyclists, one of whom had been blown off his bike very recently… His pants and shirt were shredded down the left side, and blood ran freely from his knee and elbow… I stopped a little way in front of them and waited for the lead cyclist to ride up to me…

“You Ok..?” I asked…

“Yeah… Fucking wind, man…!! Huge gust blew me over back there…!! Didn’t even feel it coming…!!” he replied with an American twang…

“You need to get a heavier bike, Dude…!!” I said, laughing…

“Yeah, right…!! I won’t be coming back this way anytime soon though, I’ve had it with this wind, man…!!”

“You should have been here yesterday afternoon, it was a lot worse than this…!! You guys better get up there and back down before lunchtime, otherwise you might pick up a few more souvenirs from this road…!!” I advised, pointing at the blood running down into his shoe…

A herd of reindeer had to be cleared off the road so we could pass... A blast from the hooter had them scattering in all directions...!!

Up at Nordkapp, the wind had settled down, not died…just settled down a touch…!! I met a Polish biker who had ridden up late last night, and had slept next to his bike…!!

“I was too exhausted to ride back down,” he said, “So I just lay down next to my bike and went to sleep… It was very cold, this I can tell you…!”

“You can also tell me that you are crazy…!!” I joked “Did the wind not die down at some stage so that you could give it a go…?”

“I don’t know…!! Every time I woke up it was blowing hard, so I just tried to sleep…!!”

He was wearing what seemed to be all the clothes in his possession, and with his sleeping bag wrapped around his shoulders, he went off behind one of the buildings to take a leak, mumbling something about coffee…

The King Monument, erected in 1873...

My eyes were drawn to the "outermost point of the North" bit... I went to stand where King Oscar had stood, 137 years ago... It felt good...!!

I walked around to the front of the building, and then sat down on my helmet and looked down upon the beacon, which is out on the point of a cliff overlooking the sea… I thought about the things that drive people to seek out the ends of the earth, climb the highest mountains, and raft the longest rivers… There is far more to it than the old saying, “Because it is there…”…

My helmet on the Beacon at Nordkapp...

Some people are happy to coast through life, others like myself, need something special to define who we are…

We need to take risks, live out on the edge for awhile, look for challenges and then fight our way through and over any obstacles put in our way… We feel the need to fight for what it is we desire… We have difficulty in accepting things that are handed to us on a plate…

I walked down to the beacon, climbed up on the concrete plinth that holds it, and put both my hands on the cold steel girders from which it is made…

That was the moment when I really felt that I had made it…!! I rested my forehead against one of the struts and closed my eyes…

Snapshots from the last six months flashed through my mind, a catalogue of the wonderful places I had been, the things I had seen and the people I had met…

It was another of those “big breath” moments…

There was nobody else about, except for a couple who were walking towards me along the cliff-side gravel path, a few hundred metres away… As they drew closer, I stepped down and stood looking out to sea…

They stopped close to me and stood quietly for a while, then the woman walked over and put her hand on my shoulder… I looked into her smiling eyes, and it was if I had known her for ages… It seemed like a natural thing for her to do, coming up to a complete stranger and putting her hand on his shoulder…

“This is an emotional time for you, yes…?” she asked, her German accent barely noticeable…

“Yes…” I said simply… “It is…!!”

Her husband or boyfriend came to stand next to her, and put his arms around her shoulders, and the three of us stood like that, leaning against each other in silent support… It was almost as if we had made the journey together…

“We stayed up here in our camper last night… We saw you yesterday… We were standing over there…” she said, looking over her shoulder, at the safety fence a short distance away… “We could see on your face that it was a difficult time you had to get here…!!”

Leaving the highest latitude that we would reach on our tour, the Gypsy Biker and the Big Fella prepare to head south...

“Yeah, it was a struggle…!! I have ridden a long way to stand here…!!”

“And you still have a long way to go, Gypsy Biker…!!”

My jaw dropped open and I stared back at her, our noses only inches apart… They both burst out laughing at the look on my face…!!

“We have seen your bike…!! You moved it out of the wind and behind our camper yesterday… We took many pictures of it, I hope you don’t mind…!!” said the guy…

“We went onto your website last night and have been reading your stories…!! It is very exciting, what you are doing…!!”

We chatted for a while, comparing the routes we had ridden to get there… They had come up along the Fjords of Norway, and would be driving back through Finland and Poland to get home… We took some photos of each other on the beacon before their camera battery ran out…

It was a wonderful moment for me, connecting instantaneously to this couple out on the windswept cliffs of Nordkapp… We hugged and shook hands, wished each other well, and then they were gone…

As I watched them walking away, I realised that I had not asked for their names and briefly wondered if I should go after them… I thought better of it however… Chance encounters such as these are best remembered without the clutter of introductions…

It seems to detract from the “mystery” of the moment… I know that I will never forget our shared time up at Nordkapp, and to my German “friends” I must say “Thanks for caring…!!”…

I kissed the cross that hung around my neck, giving thanks for getting me here safely, and for the long ride it had taken to get up here, and then walked slowly back to the Big Fella, ready to begin the long road south, running ahead of the winter that seemed to be fast approaching…

GBWT 2010