Gwilym's Adventure Blog

It was a wet start to the morning on the south side of the Dingle Peninsula but not to be deterred I headed for the very end. A quick stop at the beach my sister told me about (I sat in a cafe watching the rain) and then I carried on to Dunmore Head, Ireland's most Westerly point (and Europe's most Westerly in some people's eyes). Unbelievably, the weather cleared just long enough for me to park the bike and walk to the very end to take pictures of the Blasket Isles before it closed in again. As I continued on the WAW through Conor Pass (I could not see a thing due to the mist) I was beginning to question whether to continue or find somewhere to bail out. However on the north side of the peninsula, the weather cleared and the sun was shining, the roads were dry so it had probably not rained there at all. After Tralee, I went to the beach for a break an watched some surfers before carrying on to my decision of the day. Ferry for 9 Euros or 150km detour i...

  What a rough night! Too hot to sleep properly and a dog barking constantly. In the early hours, I heard a noise in my porch during the night and there was a cat in there. It soon got sent on its way. After starting the bike up at 7:06am (just to make sure no one would complain about the 7am rule), today was a mile munching day where all roads are game on and so it was a mix of motorway ring roads to avoid large towns and fast trunk roads in between. Goodbye Portugal and back into Spain for another of the goals for this trip. That was to get to the most southerly point on mainland Europe which is the small island at Tarifa. Sadly you are not allowed to drive along the causeway so I had to walk the last 200 metres or so to the fort. I have now been to the North ,South and West points of Europe but East will take some planning as people can't agree where it is. There are a number of options but as people can't decide if Mont Blanc or Elbrus is the highest mo...

Since 1979 The Village People having been telling us to " Go West ". Well I did that today and I ran out of road. A great start to the day that was overcast and never went above 20 degrees allowed me to ride for a full 4 hours stopping just once for fuel before my first major goal of this trip. Cabo da Roca is the most westerly point on mainland Europe. What was really nice was that coffee and cake was only a third of the price of the same at Nordkapp. After my snack there, I used the toll motorway to bypass Lisbon but that didn't go well. When I approached the toll both I saw what I thought was a bike lane and rolled through thinking it was nice they didn't charge bikes.  Well, 50km later I found out it wasn't a bike lane and had to explain to a man in a booth why I had no ticket. 30 euro fine for me. but I did shave off about 50km and 2 hours form the route above Anyway, back on the nice roads and I was heading south. A quick glance at ...

I made it, the road ended, there was no more north. I was at Nordkapp or The North Cape at the very top of Norway and indeed the top of Europe.  11 days riding, covering 4474 km (2796 miles) plus ferry travelling and  here I was, stood in a place nearer to the North Pole than to home. Although I did really want to get here, this was as much about the journey as the end point. I expect at least 150km was underground as I have lost count of how many tunnels there were but there were loads. A round trip of 470 miles today with some great roads, finally all the warnings of Reindeer came true and they were everywhere, mainly off the road but as you can see from the bike cam pic, some were not so sensible. I also saw a couple of Red Squirrels today but no pics of them. I was really pleased to see as I was heading back to Alta, the 2 guys from The Ukraine (that I met on the Denmark Ferry) and the lady from Italy (that ...