Knivskjellodden
 

Hi,
I rode up to North Cape in June 1999. You may be interested in this place if you've not already considered it.

My big recommendation is to walk to Knivskjellodden, a wild headland to the west of N.Cape and actually a few yards further north. It really is a 'must do' visit. There's a carpark at the start of the path, a few miles before you reach North Cape. I set off from there at about 8:00pm on 20th June with good weather that looked like it would hold. I arrived at Knivskjellodden about 00:30am 21st June, and it was truely magical! And dramatic! Completely alone, with the huge orange sun hanging up in the sky to the north and the Arctic Ocean alive with sea birds.
The guide books will advise you about doing this walk, you have to be reasonably equipped. The path is alternately rocky and marshy so its route is not obvious, and is only marked by red paint on boulders every few hundred metres. A hand-held GPS would be good for safety. I just walked in motorbike gear, some water and food, and trusted the good weather would continue.

One other point - there's that long tunnel that connects the mainland with the island. It holds some world record for the length of a road tunnel I think. If the weather is fine and sunny when you approach it (as it was for me), stop before the entrance and put on all your winter cold-weather gear. Once you enter, it becomes colder and colder and colder as it dives under the sea. By the time I was almost halfway through I was seriously cold. So I ignored the speed limit to get out quickly, but that's not straightforward as it's very dark inside, and wet, and the walls are just rough blasted rock and not easy to follow once you're going fast.

Have a good trip.

I sort of agree about the tyres.
We did the trip in 2005 on my XJ900F, 2 up. 4100 miles round trip, rear (new on before leaving) was dead on return. I normally get 8-9000 out of them.

Just got back from UK->Estonia->Spain-> trip (yes, silly) and the Lith/Lat/Est roads have also been harsh on the rear tyre.

Yah, we definitely did just that, Mr. Buddha. Glad to hear your trip worked out fine. I had an entire hostel to myself, and the owner swore you'd never have found anyplace else to stay....but I supposed I'd have seen your bleached bones by the roadside if you'd not.

From Nordkapp I made it south through Eastern Europe as far as well south in Turkey before swinging around north through Greece, ex-Yugoslavia and Italy to drop my bike in Germany. I'm currently getting ready to head south again, provided I can rent my place for enough money to pay for the bulk of it.

Good luck and safe journeys!

Mark

lofoten islands and nordkap
 

Namaste Mark,
that was a nice trip you ended up doing and no problems with the klr ?.i remember we talked about sourcing spare parts for the klr.i recall i had to get my spares for my klr from a european kawasaki distributor in holland .my bike was an import from california (A9 model)70,000km when i sold it and so i had to find american spec parts through this company in holland.anyway i stayed out in the lofotens for a week and rented a fishermans hut in henningsvaer.got a discount as it was out of season and had a great week touring around the islands.weather was fantastic but with cold sharp mornings with heavy frost until sun got high enough to burn it off.spent a few days in the nordkap region basing myself in honningsvag.took a road down over the finnish border and it was refreshing to bike through the forests and lakes after the artic tundra and cold northern winds.i then drove down through rain and sleet into northern sweden and eventually took the ferry from trelleborg in southern sweden to sassnitz in germany.thinking of heading down to turkey in september 2010 for four weeks did a bit of volunteer work there in `75.be nice to tour there again after thirty five years.in the meantime happy trails Dave