My last hours in Norway on this trip.
I take my time eating breakfast and packing my stuff, the ferry is scheduled to leave at 1 pm.
Waiting in line for boarding I meet Markus, another recumbent rider from Germany. He is also doing the North Sea Cycle Route. He has only 2 months time, though. He has taken no rest day up to Bergen. Contrasting with my style of travel: during the last four weeks I had as many rest as travel days. But that's OK. I'm doing this for fun. :-) (A link to Markus' travel blog can be found on the links page.)
The boarding seems to go faster than expected, we are leaving half an hour early. The first two hours the journey takes us along the coast, between the islands. After that it is east, across the Atlantic. Now only the occasional oil rig is to be seen.
In the evening I meet with Markus, comparing notes, and talking about the rest of the trip. He wants to spend a few days on the Orkneys, before continuing south. I skip that part of the NSCR, since I'm way behind schedule.
Markus has some nice maps for the scottish and english parts of the NSCR. They are published by Sustrans. (Link on links page) Since I don't have any maps of Scotland yet I take some photos of the important parts to help me over the first one or two days.
As we are to arrive in Scrabster at 5 am I set my alarm clock to 4 am.
