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In Which Everyone Gets On Their Bike

August 30, 2006 by Mike

Flakk - just outside Trondheim

I came to bury Trondheim, not to praise it. By the time I got off to sleep in my luxurious bed (a double bed.. wow!) last night, with damp-to-soaking clothes draped around the cabin and rain thundering on the roof, I'd had it with Trondheim. It was, I had decided, too big, too grey, too wet and therefore in line for a literary, if not literal, kicking. All this before I had actually seen the place, of course.

A sullen gang of Finnish death metal fans are staying in the campsite, and they had further aggravated me by being polite, quiet and respectful. I found one of them brushing his teeth in the gents' facilities. Then he gargled, rinsed, cleaned the basin, smiled at me and sprayed himself with underarm deodorant. Not very Satanic.

So I wasn't predisposed to like the place.

This morning I rode in to the city - a fantabulous stretch of road, hugging an imposing coastline alongside the fjord, wooded cliffs to one side, nothing but water to the other. Some oil refineries notwithstanding, the approach is lovely - and so is Trondheim.

I'm not travelling with any guidebooks. Too bulky and expensive. Instead, I'm picking up freebie pamphlets, brochures and maps from tourist information booths. In Norway, they've been of a very high standard, though the need to say nice things about every town or 'kommune' can be a little taxing: Løkken has its very own petrol station... the third biggest cod in the recorded history of the region was caught quite near to Nordbotn... that sort of thing.

Besides, I enjoy being taken by surprise. (I realise it means I'm missing things too -- but that's a price I have to pay.) And so it was with Trondheim. I had done little more than gaze sleepily at the tourist bumpf, so I wasn't expecting a city of traditional wooden buildings - shops, houses, wharves, offices - built around a slowly unwinding river. A city of students (one in six of the population), pavement cafes, bohemian side streets, boats, secondhand bookshops, welcoming parks, quiet self-assurance.

Above all, a city of bicycles. It seems that around 25 years ago the city fathers decided their people would become cyclists. There are special road signs for bikes, special routes through the city centre, a free bicycle exchange, even a bicycle lift up one particularly perpendicular patch of paving. And, yes, the people have bought into it: everyone's on two wheels.

Except me.

I had left the Bonneville with the good (very good) folks at Ride Trondheim who dropped their regular, pre-booked work in order to give my bike a quick once-over and an oil change. How kind is that? They didn't even mind.. too much.. that they couldn't work out for a loooooong time how to switch the alarm off. (And it's a loud alarm, if any potential thieves are following this diary waiting for me to reach their town.)

I discovered that my ability to spend money in a built-up area has not been diminished by a month on the road.

Four hours later, I waltzed back to collect the bike. It was CLEAN! 5000 miles and a month's worth of Scandinavia had been washed away. I'm gutted. But the bike will be happy. Or would be if it was sentient.. and I'm determined not to anthropomorphise the thing.

They sell the Bonneville for 119,990 kroner. Give or take the odd spark plug, that's exactly twice the price back in Blighty. Bloody nora!

The front brake is becoming a little bumpy. But I only have another 1000 miles or so to the next Triumph dealer, in Bergen.

Trondheim on foot is great. On the bike, I quickly discovered, it's a maze of one-way streets that will defeat better men than I.

(Go on, I dare you - fly to Trondheim, hire a car (or bicycle), go to the turning marked "Spectrum and St Olav's" just south of the cathedral, and see if you can find any sign saying 'feel free to ride up here but you'll find after a couple of miles that it's actually a dead end and you'll have to ride all the way back.')

Or figure out how to get to the little row of cafes in Bakke after the 'Old Bridge' closes at 6.00pm sharp. You'll find all the roads in to the area are in fact one-way streets heading out.

But I'm splitting hairs. I loved Trondheim - every bit as much as I'd expected not to.

Beside the Seaside

In Which Everyone Gets On Their Bike

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