Tag: ortlieb

Day 2: Mañihueico – Hornopirén

Distance: 32.18 miles

Time: 3:59

Elevation Gain: 2,644 feet

After a good sleep in the ‘Glamping’ pod, I heated water to have with some quite pleasant granola with cranberries that I’d picked up at the supermarket, before packing up to leave.

The entire stay including the evening meal and a local craft beer, had cost around £20, which definitely seemed like good value, especially when combined with our host’s good humour.

Setting off, with Marlen and Pablo again, we enjoyed a short stretch along the coast, the weather was fair, but there was a stiff breeze in our faces as we headed in the direction of Contao.

Soon, however, the road turned inland and started to climb, and we struggled up steepening gradients, working our way through the trees, into ever strengthening sunshine.

The windchill took the edge off as we crested an undulating plateau at 800 feet elevation, and views back out towards the sea emerged.

A lengthy downhill followed with Pablo and Marlen rocketing into the distance, confidence inspired by their background in mountain biking, and also their far superior hydraulic disc brakes.

Shortly afterwards, we stopped at a local minimarket for some snacks, the sign suggested that it was open, but there was no one inside, not until the shopkeeper emerged from the house nearby to open it up for us.

Pickings were slim, but I ended up with a packet of small scones, the hardness of which gave the impression that they’d been in the shop for a considerable amount of time.

Surprisingly, though, they did taste quite good, especially after Pablo produced a squeezable pouch of Manjar Tradicional as an accompaniment. It’s a type of Dulche de Leche also common in his home country of Argentina.

Another climb led to an attractive and fertile open valley, with horses stretching their legs in the fields that lay either side of the road.

The last descent, down into Hornopirén, was joyous, with a great road surface, and fantastic views of the happily situated bay starting to unfold.

First port of call was, in fact, the ferry terminal, as we strove to source the elusive tickets for the next part of the route, the Bi-modal ferry to Caleta Gonzalo. Elusive, in that we had spent the entirety of the previous ferry crossing – the day before – attempting to buy tickets online, before realising that the system would not be working any time soon.

And in case you’re wondering what a Bi-modal ferry is, it’s a ferry journey, in which we’d have to get out and cycle in the middle. I’m sure it’ll catch on…

Chile for January

It has not escaped my attention that 2026 will signify a decade since I started writing this blog, and so, I thought it would be a good opportunity to mark the occasion by ticking a fairly significant cycle-touring challenge off my list: namely, the Carretera Austral, or ‘Southern Highway’.

The Carretera Austral is an 800 mile sliver of tarmac and gravel, that cuts through a sparsely populated, and geographically complex, portion of Chile’s Patagonian Lake District. Begun by General Pinochet in 1976, the route was only fully realised in 2000, and links a series of tiny – previously isolated – coastal communities between Puerto Montt in the north, and Villa O’Higgins in the south.

As Villa O’Higgins is a long way from an airport that offers regular commercially-available flights, there is the added complication that I will need to push on farther south, via a combination of ferries and hike-a-bike, to reach a remote Argentinian border post near the popular trekking hub of El Chaltén, before continuing southwards and ultimately crossing back into Chile, ending the trip in Puerto Natales, which, conveniently, offers the dual purpose of providing a means to onward flights, and also acting as the perfect launchpad for visiting one of my longest-serving bucket list destinations, Torres Del Paine National Park.

It would be something of an understatement to say that I am extremely excited about having the opportunity to undertake this adventure, one that I had been contemplating for many years, before seriously considering it for last winter. Then, when I spotted that Pierre – who I cycled with in Vietnam in 2020 – was attempting the route, last year, I was determined to get – not only – some advice about the challenges he had encountered, but also an endorsement that I should do it too…

Norway 2025 Day 1: Bergen – Sletta

Distance: 38.08 miles

Time: 4:32

Elevation Gain: 2,696 feet

It might not be the most sensible way to start the first day of a 1200 mile cycle tour, but I had engineered my whole trip so that I could factor in a parkrun, so it seemed unlikely that I’d back out now. It was a kilometre to the start of Lovstien parkrun, and much of that was steeply uphill. Not that this was a surprise as the terrain to the south of the hotel towered over the city, the lower reaches covered in the colourful wooden houses for which Bergen is famous, and above that a thick forest rose into the sky.

The parkrun course ran through the forest and was a double out and back, twice, if there is such a thing. On the first lap of the course, I was happy that I’d kept my effort to a manageable level – despite the steep hills and super-high humidity – but inevitably on the second lap I saw that there were a few places to be taken and got a little carried away, finishing in a reasonably satisfying 10th place.

Happy with my morning’s efforts, I made it back in time to have breakfast in the hotel’s 5th floor restaurant, which gave lovely expansive views over the city.

Finally packed and ready to roll – just as check out finished at 12 o’clock – I made my way into town, keen to sample the ambience of Bryggen’s historic port before joining the Norwegian section of Eurovelo 1, The Atlantic Coast Route.

Almost instantly I was muttering in annoyance as the cycle path I was on suddenly disappeared in front of me – due to repair works being carried out on a tunnel – so I had to bump back down onto the road.

As I pedalled around the first headland, the terrain was relatively flat, and shortly afterwards I was sitting overlooking the cojoined fjords of Sognefjord and Hardangerfjord, eating a picnic of Flotemysost (a version of the traditional Brunost, brown cheese, made with sheep’ milk instead of goats’) and strawberry jam, on pancakes (traditionally waffles), a flavour combination I’d first tried at the cafe on the previous day’s train.

Some steeper inclines sapped my strength in Morvik and Mjolkeraen before the stiffest test yet took me up and over to the first of a pair of bridges that would see me hopscotching across the bay to Knarvik.

After stopping at the Kiwi supermarket in Ikenberget for a tasty pasta salad, I’d had enough of overcomplicated cycling infrastructure when I ended up steeply dropping down into an underpass, before struggling up the other side, all to cross the road to a cycle path that stopped at a bus stop, 50 yards later.

Luckily, soon afterwards, the cycle path alongside the 565 petered out, and when the route forked off to meander around in a tangential direction, I opted to carrry on along the pretty fjord, on the direct, quiet road I was on. And, with one last climb to overcome, the road dropped down to Sletta Kai og Fritid, the only campsite I could find for miles around.