Hello!…after The Odyssey, I vowed I would never write another blog. Well, that was then and this is now, another cycling trip, another blog!

Tomorrow, a flight from Windsor to Toronto to Copenhagen to ride a 28 day, 1,156 miles(1,861 km), 91,470ft (27,880 m) of climbing bike trip through Denmark and Norway, appropriately named Vikings… Bike and Mr. Pink locked and loaded!
Please Air Canada don’t lose my luggage!

 I’ve been told by my Down Under hosts that it will be warm, however I will bring cold weather clothing just in case! 
For comparison, here are the lines of latitude for various places:

Kingsville, Barcelona and Rome      42 N parallel **

Edmonton Alberta                             53N parallel

Yellowknife NWT                                62N parallel **

Copenhagen                                       55N parallel **

Alesund Norway                                  62N parallel **…..so I think I am safe to say it could be cool/cold on this trip, hope I’m proved wrong!

We were told by the lead guide to pack ‘eye blinders’ for 2 reasons; it only gets dark for 2 hours a day, and the folks in Denmark and Norway don’t use curtains on their windows!

The Vikings are often portrayed as one-dimensional warriors, invaders, barbarians and predators, whose achievements include little more than plundering and raiding. BUT they were more than that, an ancient culture and religion with a direct closeness to the environment. They were farmers, fishermen, traders and travellers centuries before their invasion of Northumbria at Lindisfarne in 793AD. The Viking empire stretched from Constantinople to Northern Africa, most of Europe, Iceland, Greenland, the UK and North America, a major player from the 5th to 10th centuries.

Burial grounds discovered in Scandinavia showed men and women were interred (when not cremated) with personal items such as ships, swords, shields, jewellery etc, to take with them to Valhalla, the goal of every Viking.
However, no excavations have shown evidence that Vikings rode bicycles…my fellow berserkers* and I will show them how it’s done!!***

*the term beserk comes from beserkir, the Norse word for a special fierce, no fear frenetic kind of warrior. We may look like we are going beserk on this trip, but really we will just be having fun!

***Copenhagen is the most cycling friendly city in the world, with 546 km (340miles) of bike paths, and 50% of all travel is by bike), so despite our best efforts, we won’t be upstaging our Scandinavian hosts!….we most probably will learn from them. There might not be a better place from which to begin a bike trip!

Our first 7 days will be riding in Denmark, then a short ferry ride to the southwest shore of Norway for 20 more days.

“Rising like a storm out of the sparkling canals of Copenhagen to a crescendo among the epic fjords, snowy peaks and roaring waterfalls of Norway.”

As Sheryl Crow sang, “all I want to do is have some fun, I got a feelin’ I’m not the only one”