After a full night of sleep I left the campsite late; I even went for an extra round of sleep after it started raining when I was about to get up. Unfortunately it wasn't the driest of nights I've had and the stuff I hung outside the tent to dry as well as the tent itself was still wet when I finally packed up. Bummer, but at least the laundry might dry on the bike.
I took the Olderdalen ferry in the early afternoon and then enjoyed a mostly quiet ride to the next ferry, as traffic in between those only moves in waves triggered by the docking of a boat. The weather was nice so far and indeed, my laundry was reasonably dry when I reached the other ferry. The Lyngen mountain range that I crossed on that stretch delivered spectacular views at every centimeter of the road, except maybe for the two tunnels.
After the second ferry the route joined the E8 to Tromso which is a rather busy trunk road, especially during late after noon when I reached it. There's a new bridge getting built over the Ramfjord. To make way for the construction of the northern end the quiet road down at the fjord has been blocked so cyclists now have no alternative route to the E8 for the time being. But that was only a couple kilometers, luckily. Around eight p.m. I reached Tromso and had to decide how to continue.
Route planning wise I was out of sync with my original trajectory after the detour to Arnoya. Continuing via Kvaloya as I had hoped to do wasn't practical as the ferry to Senja doesn't run during the night. The southern alternative via Tennskjaer too didn't work as the speedboat wouldn't sail until tomorrow afternoon. The coastal route to the rescue! I knew from earlier travels that the boat would be in Tromso around midnight, right in time for my plans. So while I sat down to munch on a 20 Euro kebab, I booked a trip with the Havila company to Finnsness, thereby evading all the speedboat and ferry shenanigans. The Havila boat is quite a change from the older Hurtigruten liners that I'm used to: for starters, it runs on LNG and batteries. It was amazingly quiet during docking and manoevering back out of the Tromso port. Since the restaurant was closed I had the entire observation lounge on deck nine for myself. Time to grab some sleep ...
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