GUILLAUME NERY | SCANDINAVIAN BIKEPACKING. For Caravan athlete Guillaume Néry, the renowned freediver who lives on the Côte d’Azur, a summer bikepacking trip has become a tradition. As a teenaged apprentice in freediving, Néry would use the bike to build muscle, work on his breath control and energy efficiency, riding up to five times a week, and even as his career progressed he’d still cycle twice a week. Now, his relationship to the bike has changed: no longer a training tool, it is instead a way to find the freedom he also experiences underwater – but with company. Having tackled the Alps and Pyrenees and, in 2022, the Balkans, in 2023 he turned his sights north, to a cooler destination. July saw Guillaume, his partner, Audrey, and good friend Fouad arrive in Copenhagen with loaded bicycles (Guillaume’s weighed 45kg, and the others’ not much less!) for a month’s riding through Scandinavia. “By looking at each person’s bike, and what they bring along, how they pack it and what their priorities are, you understand someone’s personality,” Guillaume says.
En route to Allerum in Sweden, the first stop, the friends marvel at the sheer numbers of people riding bicycles and how flat the countryside is, after the mountains of the Côte d’Azur. Their first night campsite appears to be an idyllic spot – that is, until a seagull steals the salmon they’d caught for dinner!
At 204km, they reach Gothenborg, where they celebrate Guillaume’s birthday with a roof over their heads, a real bed, herring on toast and an impromptu visit to a Coldplay concert – since the band happened to be playing the town. After Gothenborg, the heavens opened, and the two days’ ride to Röe take place under a deluge. From there they headed to Strömstad luxuriating in the sun once again – a wet/dry pattern that would, over the course of the trip, become very familiar.
Memories of Sweden: Kardemummabullar, Guillaume’s favourite cardamom buns; finding laundries and keeping on top of everyday tasks; buying fresh fish direct from fishermen and eating fruits and wild raspberries found beside the trail for breakfast; squatting one night in a dirty, tumbledown shack, just to get out of the rain. “These are all little life experiences, each one a concentrated slice of life,” Guillaume says. After Stromstad, Norway. The midday ferry takes them to a more menacing landscape, with vast hilly terrain and heavy rain. A 33km late ride feels like double the distance. But Norwegian kindness saves them, when Maria and Arif, owners of a café where they’d stopped to eat, offer them a bed – and showers, and good coffee – which latter particularly pleases Fouad.
108km to Olso and time for two days off in the sun. More Kardemummabullar for Guillaume, and two pairs of glasses for Fouad, since he is losing a pair a week. And since Fouad is leaving early, they take a train to the coastal fjords so they can ride these roads together before his time is up. It feels a little like cheating, but this is a tour, not a race, and there is nobody to disqualify them!
As it gets more hilly, it gets colder and colder. Mornings become a struggle, packing vital possessions and keeping them out of the incessant rain, but Fouad is unstoppable, doped up on the espressos he makes in his Aeropress. Audrey is climbing well. At 1,000m altitude in Geilo they camp. Rain for days. No cars, freezing cold, but complete contentment. Reindeer cooked by Fouad to supplement the avocado toast and more Kardemummabullar.
Day 15: the sun has got his hat on – hip hip hip hooray! – as they ride the infamous gravel Rallarvegen road. Reaching Myrdal, they celebrate Audrey’s birthday with a muffin, and a present of a small hotel room up in the mountains. After a huge breakfast they ride along Sognefjord, Norway’s longest (204km) and deepest (1,308m) fjord. Fouad leaves, tired and content with his experience; Guillaume and Audrey press on and, after 123km and a ferry ride, reach Førde, passing 1,000km total in the process. The rain doesn’t take away from the breathtaking landscape of forests, cliffs and waterfalls crashing into the fjords. At Førde, they have a day off and a night in a warm apartment. Cooking, washing, reading, resting: the simple pleasures of centring and looking after oneself during a long trip.
A sprint the next day to Bremangerlandet for the evening ferry, but they make time to pick up mackerel for dinner. With fatigue setting in and the bikes feeling heavier and heavier, they attack the most remote region of Norway, with few places to sleep or refuel. In the midst of it, a day in Bjørkedal in a 400-year-old house, before leaving for Leknes.
After a night at a ferry station in Liabygda, a quick sea swim at an idyllic spot – irresistible for a free-diving champion! – followed by shrimp toast and coffee in a historic hotel. Then, after riding the most beautiful road (even better than the Col d’Aubisque, in Guillaume’s opinion), they set up camp at another ferry station.
For the last day on the bike, they take on Trollstigen, one of Norway’s legendary mountain roads, climbing for 32km – again in the rain. Not far on, their adventure ends in Åndalsnes, with a rainbow.
"Reflecting on the experience, Guillaume says the most challenging part was the constant changing from warm to cold, dry to wet and light to dark, even with a full complement of kit. And he was also struck by the allemannsretten law (similar to a “right to roam”), which means that bikepacking and wild camping with care and respect for people’s properties and the natural environment is an easy and normal thing in Norway. The experience, overall, of sharing these places, of learning to live together 24/7, to adapt, and to help each other through uncomfortable moments, is what makes long bike trips unforgettable. “There’s always those moments when everyone wants to be alone, but in the end you realise that it’s being together that makes these trips so powerful,” Guillaume says.
Guillaume is already thinking ahead to the next trip – which he might share with his daughter!"
20/11
