Iceland - Epilogue
Leaving Iceland meant the trip back home began, taking a week on the ferry then accross Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands.
Back on board the Smyril Line ship Nörenna, which was now quite familiar, I settled back into my cabin and hung my bike kit up to dry. The first night at sea was pretty windy and lumpy so the ship was pretty quiet. As I’m used to sailing (and live on a sailing boat too) it doesn’t really bother me so I enjoyed the quiet time and had a nice dinner in the buffet.
24 hours later we were to stop in the Faroe Islands again, as we did on the way over, although this time for over 7 hours rather than the 30 minutes on the outward voyage. This is because the ship’s home port is Tórshavn in the Faroe Islands and needed some routine mainteance. So the exciting thing was that we could get off the ship and have a look around.
Having a few hours to walk around Tórshavn was nice although the weather started to come in again which brought us back to the ship to get into the dry. On the way into the ship I saw a guy with his motorbike standing waiting to check in and I recognised him from the trip over from Denmark. He’d obviously spent the week in the Faroes so I asked him about his experience there. It seemed that he’d had even more wind than us in Iceland and had battled around the islands most of the days. So at least I felt lucky we’d also had some good weather.
A little over 24 hours later we were arriving into Hirtshals, Denmark again and all of us bikers who’d been chatting over the last few days saying goodbye to each other and heading away via our own routes home. In fact a couple of hours later I passed by one of the French guys I’d been chatting to in the campsite in Seyðisfjörður riding his Himalayan all the way home to near Paris in one go. As I passed I waved and in my rear-view mirror I could see his fist in the air and I knew he’d be saying “BETTY!” as he had done a few times in the last few days. He has a biker’s lodge in the centre of France and I’ll definitely stay on the way through France sometime.
My plan back in Denmark was to ride down to Aarhus and take the ferry from the mainland of Jutland over to the island of Zealand to visit a friend in Copenhagen. Booking a hotel in the middle of Copenhagen I headed off to the ferry port, arriving just before 16:00. The next ferry was at 16:30 so I bought a ticket online and waited in the check-in area. When 16:30 arrived and no boat turned up and literally nobody else was there I figured something was wrong. Of course my sat nav had taken me to the wrong port of Ebeltoft instead of the main port in Aarhus which was an hour down the road. So, I turned around and headed there instead. This extra detour added a lot of time to the trip and eventually I got a ferry over to Zealand at 19:00, arriving at 20:30. So by the time I arrived in Copenhagen it was 22:00 so I parked up in the secure parking, had a quick shower, then went down to the bar for a couple of beers before bed.
The next morning the old wind was back again but I had brunch with my friend before heading south to Rødbyhavn to catch the ferry over to Germany. By the time I got onto the E47 motorway the wind was blowing a gale again and it was horrible. Gusting and blowing me around. Also just as I left Copenhagen my Garmin started freezing and crashing so I had to use my phone with a waterproof case against the rain. There were a couple of bridge crossings down towards Rødby and they were pretty terrifying—making sure I wasn’t near any other vehicles, keeping my revs high, bracing against the wind. But eventually I got to the ferry port and checked in, waiting for the ferry in the gusting wind and heavy rain.
The crossing is only about 45 minutes but I managed to have some lunch on board before disembarking down the slippery, metal ramp, back into Germany. The next part of the ride took me via Hamburg to Bremen where I was staying in the same hotel I stayed at on the way up. But this part of the ride as about as miserable as it can get. The wind was really strong, showers dumping on me, then the clouds clearing and blazing sunshine reflecting off the roads so much it was hard to see. It was just a horrible slog but with a couple of stops I eventually arrived at the hotel.
Checking the weather forcast that evening I saw that the German Meterological Service had issued a Severe Weather Warning for wind in the area I as in for the next day. It was bad enough that day and the next day I had planned to ride to near Rotterdam in the Netherlands. After a bit of a think it just didn’t seem sensible to ride in that weather so I asked the hotel if I could extend my stay, but they were fully booked. However I did find a landhaus hotel about 30 minutes away so I got packed up the next morning and headed straight there.
Even 30 minutes in the weather was enough and it definitely would have been a bad idea to ride all the way to the Netherlands in that wind. But I had a really lovely night in a beautiful little hotel and a good evening meal in their restaurant. Thankfully I could spend the time I had there fixing my Garmin by completely resetting it and then downloading all of the latest maps and firmware updates again. Although I’d opened a support case with Garmin, they replied once to ask for some firmware details and then never replied again. Really disappointing.
The next day was much more calm although by the time I got to the Netherlands the wind was pretty strong again, being closer to the western coast. The last few miles was wet and windy but eventually the discomfort was over and I waited in the ferry terminal waiting area with another couple of bikers as we chatted waiting for check-in and boarding so we could get into our cabins and warm up…
Arriving back in the UK the next morning it felt a bit surreal. I was a couple of hours from home and the memories of the last couple of weeks were running through my thoughts. But in time I pulled back into my driveway and the trip was over. I’d achieved what I’d set out to accomplish and felt very proud…and also exhausted.
Prev: Iceland - Day 7
Next: Iceland - Final Thoughts