The final leg has come, 382 km to Vardø, the most eastern town in Norway. The first part of the journey, so remote that I have to dig deep into my luggage to find a package of emergency meal. The last part of it, so windy that I'm hardly able to keep more than 10-12 km/h on flat roads.

The road continues with great mountain scenery around Lyngen, then further to the green city of Alta, before heading into a weather battered no-mans-land, where rein deer is a more common sight than human beings.

This leg covers maybe the most beautiful part of Norway, from Lofoten and then further to Vesterålen, Andøya and Senja. Fjords, steep mountains popping out of the ocean everywhere, but still remarkable flat and easy for cycling. I had high expectations for this stretch of road, and was not disappointed (except for the headwind).

Kystriksveien (The Coastal Route) from Namsos to Bodø, also known as Helgelandskysten, contains some of the loveliest scenery on the Norwegian coastline. It is surprisingly few tourists here because most of the cars stick to E6 heading directly to Lofoten and/or Finnmark. They don't know what they are missing out, but for cyclists I hope this stretch of coast will continue to be a hidden gem with few cars.

I had not chosen an easy start on my NPL, preferring mountains and fjords in west instead of the flat but boring E6 in east. From Stryn it would continue in the same way, a lot of high mountain passes to cross in Møre og Romsdal, but eventually it would be much easier cycling when I joined the normal NPL route from Oppdal to Namsos.

The lighthouse manager at Lindesnes told me that the good weather would continue for at least one week. That promised good for the first leg on this NPL, crossing some awesome mountains and fjords on the west coast of Norway.

The starting (or ending) point for the NPL (Norway Cape to Cape) is Lindesnes. I could have taken a bus/train from Oslo, but I had never seen much of the south coastline before, so why not cycle this part too!

The main reason for cycling from Stryn to Oslo was to buy a good bike map of Norway before I started on my long cycling tour from cape to cape in Norway (locally just known as NPL). Oslo was also a far better place than Stryn for getting essential spare parts for this tour. I could have done it more easy by taking a bus, instead I chose the hard way, to cycle the 470 km to Oslo, a good warm up for cape to cape.