The hard road to Mehamn
Oof
It’s a good thing Norway has such nice public restrooms. Our wonderfully warm weather has gone, and it went at just the wrong time. Despite siting our tent behind a wind-sheltering ridge last night, the bicycles blew over and cooking dinner required us to double down on our stove’s wind screen by wrapping the whole cooking operation in our two-butts-wide foamie sit pad. It was simple and delicious, but the smiles on our face did nothing to calm the weather.
Breakfast was surprisingly pleasant eaten under the shelter of our open vestibule, and we left the camp site expecting the 35 miles to mehamn to be windy but manageable. The first five miles of climbing went smoothly, but the weather degraded as we rose, the temperature dropping into the low single digits C, rain and snow fall picking up as we went, and a driving wind so hard the downhills felt like uphills.
The passage to Mehamn is broken into two high-country sections, connected by a low isthmus crossing. With rain pushing through our waterproof jacket zippers and filling my gore-tex shoes, it got hard to manage our body temps, regardless how much sugar we chewed down. The risk of tackling another 15-mile mountain section in our condition was too high, so with the long downhill to the isthmus visible in front of us we turned and headed back the way we came.
We had originally hoped to spend a couple of days at a hotel/campsite in Mehamn, backpack out to the northernmost point on mainland Europe, stock up on food and fuel and plan out our next section. Instead, we huddled up and dried out over lunch in the warmest, loveliest, most best public bathroom shelter thing I’ve ever seen. Once most of the wet gear was off and hung above the wall heater, our simple lunch was very welcome.
We called up the magical mystery cafe we’d stopped in yesterday, reserved a hytte (cabin) for the night, and put most of what we had left in the tank into getting there before they stopped serving dinner. Failed attempts taste much sweeter with a good meal in you.
New friends at the Ifjord camping
We spent almost an hour after dinner chatting with Selina (spp?), who helped us navigate the cabin reservation and fed us a tremendous amount of tasty food. Her mother and her mother’s ex bought the place about five years ago, and they’ve been sprucing it up and adding some nice new features since. They were just approved for an improvement grant from Innovasjon Norge, that will help them bring it to its full potential.
Selina, like Lisse earlier in the trip, originally came to Finnmark for a six-month stay, here to help out in getting the business up and running. She liked the place, and especially the community, so much that she decided to stick around. She spent a year or two working in a king crab factory, which she loved but was too hard on her back to continue. Then it was back to the camping and cafe, where she keeps things running day to day. A friend from volleyball runs the northernmost dairy operation (which we pedaled by today), and she helps out there too when she’s not working at the camping. She’s started a trivia quiz night in her new home town of Lebesby, which helps her feel like she’s giving back to the community.
In turn, friends from the area help at the camping, building and remodeling things, cooking and serving, and taking care of customers. A couple of younger staff will be around this summer, but here in the quiet season they’re very shorthanded and it’s often a friend or even a friend’s mother behind the counter doing her best to help the helpless American cycle tourists. It’s inspiring to see someone from the big city making life work in a (very, very) small town, and all for the people and the place and the quality of life they have here.
Old friends
- the fancy bathroom: even nicer the second time
New Friends
- Selina, of course!
- A fox! So red and so shaggy and way too quick for a photo.
- A mysterious disappearing caribou? All dressed in brown, with lovely white stockings on.