Monday, July 7th. I slept very well in the shelter and did my routine before leaving at 9am. The weather was very good for cycling (overcast, 17-18 °C). The shelter place was a bit hidden in a forest, so it took me about 15 minutes to get back on the route.
I cycled towards Eidanger near Porsgrunn and continued to Langesund. At this point, the roads revealed their true Norwegian face (as expected): endless hills with forests and massive rocks. My bike is a bit too heavy due to carrying food, water and some unnecessary stuff. So this little inconvenience forced me many times to push the bike uphill while the descend was super nice with max. speeds over 55 km/h! There were also some masive construction sites on the roads, very impressive stuff!
The route between Langesund and my next destination point in Kragerø was very difficult. There was a 3 km track with steep hills in combination with bad gravel road in a forest which forced me to push the bike 80% of the time. Past the forest part, roads were better but did not lack hills 😅
It took me 5 hours to cycle 40 km of this kind of terrain. In Kragerø I took the ferry to Stabbestad and continued cycling to Øysang, a small village near my destination city of Risør. This part was about 13 km and took me 1.5 hours.
According to my plan, in Øysang should have been another ferry which should take me to Risør. Upon my arrival in the harbor, everything went south: the ferry was closed for this day and it just started raining for the next 5 hours. The next ferry would leave at 10:45am on Tuesday, which is too late for me.
After standing some time in the rain and not knowing what to do next, I found a small covered stop with a bench – just to escape the rain. I decided to stay there for the next couple of hours and get some rest and try to move early in the morning. I might skip the Risør ferry and get ahead in schedule if I circumvent the bay. I would return back to Route 1 in Tvedestrand, about 30 km away from Risør.
The heat treatment of my bike computer with pocket oven worked very well! No more reboots.
108.15 km, 9h5m, 11.9 km/h, max speed 56.6 km/h
