The Northcaps

Who are “the Northcaps”?

We have called ourselves “The Northcaps” because we have now been to the North Cape four times, three of them by motorbike. The Northcaps are four older men on four newer motorbikes. We have been riding motorbikes together for many years and have undertaken at least one major trip of several thousand kilometres in each of these years.

Over the years, we have visited many European countries from the saddle. We saw these countries not only from our motorbikes, of course, but we have also walked many kilometres through the cities and landscapes after reaching our destination for the day.

Norway, Fv98

We travelled some extremely interesting roads. These included, for example, the Fv98 and what we call the “Moon Road” in the far north of Norway. The road is so lonely that you feel as if you are driving through the surface of the moon, covered in craters, especially as in spring the vegetation is not yet able to prevail against the icy cold and the extremely strong, constant wind.

Scotland Harknott Pass

Another example is the Hard Knott Pass. The Hard Knott Pass is a mountain pass in the Lake District in Cumbria, England. The pass lies at an altitude of 393 metres and is bordered to the north by the summit of Hard Knott and to the south by the summit of Harter Fell.

The road is so narrow in places that we had to stop to let an oncoming car squeeze past us. In addition, some of the hairpin bends are so narrow and steep that the bikes spin in first gear in the hairpin bend, despite the road being dry.

Pyrenees, Alps

There are no more than a handful of passes in the Alps that we have not yet travelled over. In the Pyrenees, we also followed the route of the Tour de France and were just as impressed by the huge differences in altitude as we were by the magnificent landscape in the south of France and the north of Spain.

nordkappen.de

I have produced travel reports of at least the last of these tours with our mopeds, which you can read at the Internet address https://nordkappen.de. At the moment this page is only available in German, but I am working on translating it bit by bit.

Have fun!