Avoiding the storms and visiting Stavanger

Mortavika to Arsvågen Ferry (E39)

The weather forecast for today was bad, very heavy rain and high winds predicated, so given my excesses of yesterday I opted for an easy short day of only 90 miles, but predicted journey time of ~3 hours.

Using a good weather radar I could see when the first part of the storm was due and was lucky that it was a bit earlier than expected, so it passed me (going north west like me) before I set off. I was all dressed up for wet weather riding and quickly started to melt due to the hot (22 C) humid weather, so a quick bit of de-layering (new word?) later I'd cooled down somewhat.

The main aim today was to reach the west coat and pass through Stavanger and overnight halfway to Bergen.

Norway likes its tunnels, and they also seem to think that its fine to put a roundabout in one!

Now on the coast there are more expanses of water to cross, by three 5 km undersea tunnels, bridges, and a ferry. The undersea tunnels are fairly long, obviously there is the undersea bit, but they also require long ramps as you need to be fairly deep. The temperature dropped to 16 C in the tunnels, which was a welcome relief from the humidity.

The ferry was on the main E39 road from Stavanger to Bergen, there are four ships serving the route, one every 25 minutes. I was lucky to board immediately, and no strapping down of motorbikes required this time. It was a dead flat crossing, even though I feared this would not be the case due to the storm winds.

Just after getting off the ferry it started to spit with rain. About an hour after arriving at my hotel the second storm front hit and it bucketed down, with thunder and lightning, so I think I had a lucky escape timing wise.

Tomorrow the weather forecast is meant to be good so the plan is to push north with a long day having had the chance to rest a bit today.