June 20: Day 50, Sundsvall-Sollefteå
Time to get back on the road after a very chilled rest day. Decided muesli was the best choice for breakfast, ate two bowls with yoghurt. And coffee. And juice. I'd like it if pastries were available, but this certainly works!
I dropped into a nearby supermarket to pick up some lunch. Went for a pasta salad again, it had a better price/weight than the sandwiches did. I've made this same choice, for the same reasons, a few times now! This salad comes with a packet of dressing, which sticks everything together, but that's an advantage when eating with a fork on the side of the road in a light breeze...
The route went through Sundsvall on cyclepaths, and then up the hill on the other side. And it was quite a climb; the profile says it was 100m. I tried to take it slow, as I wasn’t warmed up, and I’m old enough to worry about injuries. It passed through a suburb of large warehouse stores like Ikea, passed a dam (always good) and then joined a major road.
Cycling on major roads is getting to be quite regular, I'm not happy about it, but often it's unavoidable. Towns are few and far apart: there's few options for getting from place to place, so taking another route means the route is two sides of a triangle instead of one... and there's no guarantee that it'll be better. So I usually have a poke around on the map to see if there's another option, but usually there isn't.
From left to right: parked for a supermarket check. A rare piece of cyclepath. Someone else on the path (actually they were parked). Railway bridge beside the road bridge.
I'm going north, and most of the traffic is going south, so there wasn't that much needing to pass; and most of the time there was space for them to cross the centerline. Beyond the white line at the edge of the road was a steep gravel slope, so I didn't stay that close - if I went slightly over the edge, I would be heading down a nasty culvert with a lot of bad outcomes!
From left to right: nice river, from the bridge. Distant windfarm. The view, about a minute before it started to rain.
The weather forecast said there was a 17% chance of rain, and it showed up just after lunch. It was heavy enough for me to wonder if I should stop and get out my rain gear, but stuck it out for a few minutes and it eased off. It drizzled for about an hour; visibility was fine but everything got properly wet, so I had to be extra careful.
Fortunately the sun came out, the road dried out and the temperature went up. The morning was overcast so I hadn't bothered to put on sunscreen but it was needed now.
From left to right: wet roads. Another lake. Slightly drier roads, and yes more trees. More signs that only matter in winter.
The final section was on an odd semi-motorway with two lanes going one way, and one lane going the other. I had space on the side - which was very useful, trucks were going past regularly.
When close to Sollefteå the route peeled off from the highway, took me to the bottom of a ski lift, and announced we’d arrived. Not a good sign. I put the hotel address into Google Maps and it gave a more useful location, but estimated it’d take another 20 minutes! Seems that I was staying at the ski resort at the top of the hill, and Komoot thought it was at the bottom. There was a direct path up beside the ski lift but it was looking too steep, so I decided to take the safe and boring asphalt access road. That turned out to be quite steep too; I was in one of the lowest gears, and it was 2km of hard climb. The hotel was a 260m climb so I guess that road was all a 10% gradient - or more...
From left to right: Where the route ended; the hotel is at the top in the center. The access road with 10% slope. The view from the top.
I don't want to do that climb again so I'm having dinner at their undoubtedly overpriced restaurant.
But the views are spectacular!
