This summer’s bike trip

I have now put together a final plan for this summer’s bike trip. In the summer of 2009 I biked around Iceland (figure 1) and last summer I biked the Westfjords and Snaefellsnes peninsula (figure 2). During these trips I kept a blog which you can see here below.   

This summer I and my son will bike the interior of Iceland (figure 3). The aim is to go north along mountain route 35 which is called Kjölur (green line on figure 3) and come back south along route 26 which is called Sprengisandur (blue line on figure 3).

We start the trip on Friday, July 8th. The plan is to bike across Kjölur in 3 days and Sprengisand in 5 days. We will rest one day in Bardadalur NE-Iceland. I will be keeping a daily blog if possible. That depends partly on access to the internet and power.

This summer is the coldest on record here in Iceland for the last 60 years. We still have winter in the interior. In fact Kjölur was only opened to traffic last week and they still have not opened Sprengisandur. I spoke to the road authorities today and they tell me that 13 large and up to 2 m thick snow banks are closing the road. They will attempt to clear the road during the weekend. It will therefor be very cold in our tents as we cross this barren and isolated part of Iceland. The roads will be gravel and rough and in some places the rivers are without bridges.  

You will also be able to see our location on the internet since I will be carrying with me a satellite transmitter (SPOT) which logs my passion every 15 minutes. I will post the webpages address for the satellite in the coming days.

The plan is to bike on averages 40-50 km per day. I am assuming an averages speed on these roads of 8 km per hour. This is probably an underestimate but it is better to allow for more time then less.  The plan for the trip is shown below. Last summer I wrote my blog both in English and Icelandic. This is to enable my English speaking friends to keep track of the trip. This is however very time consuming so this year I will only write my blog in English – thus assuming that most Icelanders can read English.

As you can see from the table below we will be biking between 5-10 hours a day, on averages about 6. The longest leg is day 3 (10^th of July). That day we will bike 83 km in 10 hours. In all we will cover 452 km. This is much less than last summer when I biked 1100 and in 2009 when I biked 1400 km. This however is all on rough gravel roads so I think this trip might be as hard as the previous ones.

One not of interest – According to the Icelandic radio the volcano Hekla is stirring so we might be biking with a volcanic eruption in the background!

Dagur	Leggur	Vegl km	Leið	Tímar	dagur	Vikud
1	Gullfoss-Árbúðir	43	F35	5,4	8	föst
2	Árbúðir - Hveravellir	45	F35	5,6	9	laug
3	Hveravellir - Þjóðvegur 1 Blöndudal	83	F35	10,4	10	sun
4	Flutningur				11	mán
5	Mýri í Bárðardal -Kiðagilsdrög	53	F26	6,6	12	þrið
6	Kiðagilsdrög - Nýjidalur	43	F26	5,4	13	mið
7	Nýjidalur - Versalir	56	F26	7,0	14	fimt
8	Versalir - Hrauneyjar	53	F26	6,6	15	föst
9	Hrauneyjar-Þjóðvegur 1	76	F26	9,5	16	laug
		452		56,5

 

Ljósafossinn

Tók þátt í ljósafoss göngunni í dag og bjót til þetta myndband. Það er ekki í fullri upplauns hér..

 

 

First day of biking over (25.06.10)

A nice day of biking from Hvalfjörður to Bifröst in all 71 km.  Weather was good, calm winds, cloudy and occasionally drizzle. Stopped at Borgarnes and had dinner at Baula. We had intended to sleep in the tents tonight but it was raining so  we rented a small cabin to stay in. A good idea since it rain heavily in the night. It took us 4 hours and 50 min to cycle these 71 km which gives an average speed of 15 km/h. The photo is taken of me and Lárus at the start of the trip and of the hut we slept in.

 

Fyrsti dagur hjólatúrs að kveldi kominn. Ferðin gekk vel frá Hvalfjarðargöngum að Hraunsnefi þar sem við gistum. Veður var hagstætt, hafgolan í bakið en annars lyngt. Hann úðaðið aðeins á okkur undir lokinn. Fengum okkur kvöldmat á Baulu en höfðum ætlað að vera í tjaldi um nóttina. Hins vegar var erfitt að finna gott tjaldsstæði auk þess sem hann var farinn að herða á rigninunni. Leigðum smáhýsi og gistum þar um nóttina. Myndin er af mér og Lárusi við upphaf ferðar  og af smáhýsi þar sem við sváfum.

The game is on!

The day is finally here! Tomorrow I will start my bike ride around the west fjords (including Snæfellsnes). I will start at 16:00 and bike from Hvalfjörður to Bifröst the first day. I will be blogging every day so be sure to look in every now in then. I will not be alone; Lárus H. Bjarnason will be joining me as will my sister (likely on Sunday) and possibly more people as the journey continues.

 

Þá er stundin runnin upp. Á morgun hefst hjólatúrinn um Vestfirði eða öllu heldur vesturland þar sem ætlunin era ð hjóla í kringum Snæfellsnes. Alls verða þetta 1100 km. Ég mun blogga á hverjum degi svo endilega lítið inn á bloggið. Lárus H. Bjarnason mun fylgja mér mestan hluta leiðar sem og systir mín og ef til vill fleiri.

I have a date for the summer trip/Dagsetning komin fyrir sumarferðina

Well the date has been decided. If everything goes according to plan a will start my biking trip this summer on June 25^th.

 

Þá er komin ákvörðun um hvenær ég legg í hann í sumar. Ef allt gengur eftir verður það 25. júní

Next summers trip - Ferðin næsta sumar

The table below shows the planed 2010 trip around the Westfjord broken down into daily sections. The trip will take 15 days. The idea is to cycle on average 75 km per day.

The longest day is around 135 km. This long day is on a relatively flat road, one of those where you endlessly go in and out of fjords. The distance between the starting point and destination this day in a direct line is only 34 km! The fjords are in other words adding 100 km to the travel distance. Some well placed road tunnels would be an improvement here!

The shortest day is only 28 km this day I need to cross two mountain passes that go as high as 500 m.a.s.l.

I am estimating an average daily speed of 10-15 km/h which I think is about right considering road conditions and difficulty level. Las summer I usually was averaging between 15-20 km/h. Wind has a great effect here and keep in mind that I am pooling a 20 kg trailer behind me. Usually I prefer to cycle around 5 hours per day but as you can see some days will be twice that. The path I will be following is shown on the map (blue arrows indicate direction of travel). I have also included a map that shows the route I took last summer. I think that this trip is possibly more difficult then the one I did last summer.

Like last summer the aim of the trip is to have fun. I am not trying to set any records (except possibly of being the fattest person that has cycled this circle).

 

Taflan fyrir neðan sýnir ferðalag sumarsins 2010. Ferðin tekur 15 daga og stefni ég að því að hjóla að jafnaði 75 km á dag en suma daga fer ég lengra og er lengsti dagur ferðarinnar frá Reykjanesi að Ísafirði 133 km. Þetta er hins vegar eftir sléttum vegi. Þann dag er ég að hjóla firðina við Ísafjarðardjúp. Loftlínan á milli staðanna er aðeins 34 km en vegurinn 133! Væri ekki ágætt að setja nokkur göng á þessa leið?

Stysti dagurinn er 28 km en það er yfir tvær háar heiðar að fara þann dag. Ég er að reikna með því að halda meðalhraða 10-15 km/kls. enda er ég að hjóla í miklum brekkum á erfiðum vegum. Í sumar hélt ég um 20 km meðalhraða. Vindurinn skiptir öllu máli hér. Hann hægir mjög á manni. Það er t.d. erfitt að fara mikið yfir 10 km/klst. í sterkum mótvindi. Líka þarf að muna að ég er með kerru í eftirdragi sem vegur 20 kg. Leiðin sem ég ætla að hjóla er sýnd á með fylgjandi korti og segja bláu örvarnar til um stefnu. Ég læt einnig fylgja kort sem sýnir hringinn í sumar. Persónulega held ég að ferðin næsta sumar verði ef til vill erfiðari en sú sem ég fór seinasta sumar.

Sem fyrr er markmiðið að hafa gaman af þessu. Ég er ekki að reyna setja nein met nema ef vera kynni að vera feitasti maður sem hefur hjólað þetta.

 

	Origin and destinations	km	Max elev. m	Min  elev. m	Elev.change m	difficulty	Avg. speed km/h	hours
1	Hvalfjarðargöng - Bifröst	64	89	0	89	h	15	4,5
2	Bifröst - Búðardalur	48	394	12	382	b	10	4,8
3	Búðardalur - Hólmavík	77	373	0	373	b	10	8
4	Hólmavík - Reykjanes	88	432	0	432	b	11	8
5	Reykjanes - Ísafjörður	133	180	0	180	f	15	8,9
6	Ísafjörður - Hrafnseyrif	62	731	0	731	bb	10	6,2
7	Hrafnseyri - Bíldudalur	78	510	0	510	bb	10	8
8	Bíldudalur - Patreksfjörður	28	500	0	500	bb	10	3
9	Patreksfjörður - Vatnsdalur	62	404	0	404	bb	10	6
10	Vatnsdalur - Gufudalur	85	334	0	334	b	15	6
11	Gufudalur - Búðardalur	93	326	0	328	bb	12	8
12	Búðardalur - Tröð	119	233	0	233	f	15	8
13	Tröð - Búðir	72	180	0	180	f	15	5
14	Búðir - Borgarnes	98	78	0	78	f	15	6
15	Borgarnes - Reykjavík	32	70	0	70	f	15	3
	Km total:	1139		Hours total:				93

 

Skrár tengdar þessari bloggfærslu:

• Hringurinn2009
• Vestfirðir2010

Talar þú ensku/Do you speak English

Do to popular demand I have decided to convert over to English here on my blog. In fact, I´ll be using both English and Icelandic. Please feel free to comment either in English or Icelandic if you want. Unfortunately you will be asked in Icelandic to sum two numbers in order to be able to make comments. These are usually two numbers between one and ten. The icelandic numbers and their translations are listed below. Please excuse the English spelling here. English is, after all, not my native tounge. I will be posting more information on next summer´s bike trip in the coming days...

Vegna margra óska hef ég ákveðið að breyta yfir í ensku á þessu bloggi. Reyndar mun ég skrifa á báðum málum. Ykkur er velkomið að gera athugasemdir á því máli sem þið kjósið helst. Þið verðið hins vegar að afsaka villur í enskri stafsetningu enda er þetta ekki móðurmál mitt. Ég mun setja innan tíðar frekari upplýsingar inn á vefinn um hjólaferð sumarsins (Vestfirðina)

ein = 1, tveir = 2, þrír = 3, fjórir = 4, fimm = 5, sex = 6, sjö = 7, átta = 8, níu = 9 and tíu = 10