First of, this is gonna be a long post for anyone interested in a motorcycle trip to Norway. I'm gonna go in as much detail as possible and will add stuff people ask about in the comments if i can. First things first, pictures.Bike picturesOther pictures(plenty of road porn) PreparingI didn't do much preparing, and what i did was last minute. I just started a new job last month and i got my bike 3 weeks ago, and my panniers two days before i left. I also got a new helmet and gear the day i left so i had no time to test it out, which i don't recommend right before a 2800km ride. Prior to this trip i had only put 1100km on my bike.But that means i booked the ferry and hostels/BnB 3 days before i had to leave. The whole point of the trip was that i wanted to go to furthest, see the most, for as cheap as possible without sleeping in tent.However if you're the tent type of guy Norway and Sweden have "Allemannsrettens" which gives everyone the right to camp anywhere in nature, with few limitations. Which is pretty incredible. If you are into tents i would highly recommend it. Norway is very safe and there are people everywhere in nature and you see campers and tents everywhere. Read about it hereI do photography as a hobby and have a big ol' DSLR camera that i wanted to bring. However my camera bag didn't fit and took up too much space so i decided to make my own out of a cheap foam mattress. It worked really well and everything fit in there snug and secure. The only thing i didn't think about was to pad the lid, as one time i hit a pot hole and something expensive bounced up and hit the lid with a clunk. Thankfully nothing broke. The RouteI used a website called Furkot to plan the trip. It's a really good site to plan roadtrips and the choice is between Furkot or My Maps from Google, both are lacking in different areas. I planned the trip in Furkot and exported it to a .gpx file and imported to TomTom MyDrive which i use with my Rider 400 GPS. Here is the road i took, broken into days. I edited the route to start and stop in Kristiansand, and remove the BnB's from the route to not dox peoples private homes.Day 1Day 2Day 3Day 4Day 5Day 6Day 7Some people said that it was a lot of riding per day, and it was. Some days worse than others. In general the days took about 30% longer than the GPS time due to traffic, sheep, sharp corners, and detours. The planned route was 2630km and i did 2800km. So about 170km of detours. The worst day i had was day 2 where i ended up riding 11 hours when you subtract the breaks. The V-Strom is comfortable, and a lot more than my old bike, however i don't think many bikes are comfortable pushing hour 11. Back pain kicked in quick. Although i generally deal with back pain so it might be worse for me than others.There are a ton of places and things to see in Norway, but the most important thing to remember is no matter where you go and what road you take, the view will be amazing and the road probably equally good. The RoadsThe roads in Norway are generally very good. There are some mountain roads, especially the old small mountain passes they keep open after they made a new (boring) main road that are bumpy and semi gravel. But the most important thing is the majority of the roads are predictable. Meaning you won't see a good road and have sudden huge pot holes, you can ride with confidence without having to worry about the road condition changing.And even to a bigger surprise, a lot of the small mountain roads have really good pavement. I don't know if Norway spends a lot of money on roads but i would say around 20% of the roads are absolutely fresh new perfect pavement and then pretty much the rest are "just" good with only a few very small roads that are semi gravel. The Stuff on The RoadSince the roads are so nice most of the time you are probably tempted to twist the throttle a little. Besides the speeding limits (more on that later), you really have to be careful in Norway in the blind corners. Since most of the roads are mountain roads also means most the corners are blind. Unless it's a big road, Norway use a "one lane" concept where there are no lane markings in the middle and just one big lane. Meaning there is no "That car went into my lane", you all share the one lane and people cut corners sometimes.As a rule of thumb you should never be riding faster than you can stop within how much of the road you can see. This is especially true in Norway. I'm fairly certain there is some scientific correlation to the blindness and sharpness of a turn, and the amount of sheep in the apex. There's sheep. Everywhere. If you can see grass? Sheep. Or cows. Cows tend to be more chill although they would still be an unpleasant experience to hit. However the sheep are very easily frightened and tend to do what i think within biology is called "Freak the fuck out" when they get scared. And they are horribly unpredictable. They can stand around and then turn 360 and haul ass in another direction. So be careful, and if possible clutch in when passing them.The next biggest predator in the Norwegian mountains except the sheep is the buses. The big fucking tour buses. If you are on route to any kind of attraction there is guaranteed to be a ton of tour buses. If you think "but this road is too narrow and sharp for buses" you are wrong. The best thing i can compare these bus drivers to is Sabine Schmitz in Top Gear going around the Nürburgring. Sometimes I've been having a hard time keeping up with some of these buses. They don't drive irresponsibly but they definitely got places to go. However they know exactly how much space they take up so they stick very close to the side of the road and they won't really be in your way besides in sharp corners where they have to cut them. Worse than the buses is people with caravans. People in caravans think they drive a semi. They need 1 meter on each side and slam on their brakes every time an oncoming car approaches because they think they can't fit, and then they go 30kph up hill the entire time because they overloaded their old caravan. The Speeding and CamerasNorway has some of strictest speed limits in Europe. As a rule of thumb it's 80kph, but every time there is a house, store, building, anything, they drop the limit to 60kph. There is reduced speed everywhere. And Norway has a ton of speed cameras. They are stationary and there are signs beforehand to warn you which is nice. Even nicer is apperantly Norway have yet to discover the technology of backwards facing cameras so they only take pictures of your front! Meaning technically you can't get a ticket from a stationary speeding camera in Norway on a motorcycle. I didn't have balls enough to test it myself though since the fees are insane too. Norway's police also have the right to take away your license on the spot if you drove too fast, and you can even get unconditionally jail for it, so, careful. http://www.speedingeurope.com/norway/One extra awesome thing for my fellow two-wheeled friends in Norway is that all the automatic tolls also only take pictures of the front, so all motorcycles don't pay any automatic toll either! It saved me around 80 Euro in just this week alone. Most tolls are around 2-5 Euro while some bridges are around 20. The CostNorway is an expensive country. Gas is around 1.7 Euro per liter, or $8 per gallon. Food is even worse. Because i wanted the trip to stay as cheap as possible i didn't eat out. And if you come from somewhere where gas station food is cheap like the USA, think again. A gas station burger can cost around 20, although it's also decently nice. I would suggest going to grocery stores and getting stuff there if you are trying to be on a budget.I exclusively stayed at hostels and BnB's. The hostels was usually worse and more expensive. In the hostels you get a tiny tiny tiny room (if you want a private room) and then pretty small gross shared showers. BnB's are of course a much more intimate experience, but i like that a lot. You meet new people and join a household for a day, i think that's cool. One of the places was a mom with some kids running around but she made me and the 3 other guest homemade dinner and talked about Norway, really cool. On average i payed 36 euro per night. A option i didn't try out of coincidence, was that a lot of camping grounds have "huts" that you can stay in too. Which is a separate little hut on the camping ground, and is probably a very Norwegian experience since most of them are old are wooden.Total with food, stays, gas, and everything except the ferry from Denmark, the trip cost me around 100 Euro a day. Let me know if you have any questions or stuff to add and i'll do my best to help. via /r/motorcycles https://www.reddit.com/r/motorcycles/comments/92nkoo/my_big_comprehensive_norway_post_album_route/?utm_source=ifttt
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