20th Anniversary European Bike Adventure: Day 17, Köping to Uppsala
This was day 5 of our 6 day final push through to Stockholm, and I'm not gonna lie: we were tired.
The heels of our hands ached, and we both had numbness through various digits. We both had achey knees. Our new normal was a mild state of dehydration. And now we were starting our longest ride of the entire trip: 82 miles. It was going to be a long day.
But we were excited to be so close to the end! And we were still having fun. And we still liked each other, which is never a foregone conclusion on an adventure like this.
AND we broke the pattern! The day before was sunny, and looking out the window, this day was ALSO sunny! Yay!
I had gotten ice cream bars for dessert the night before, not realizing how many miles we still had left to get to our house, and how very slowly we were going to ride those miles. They were pretty melted by the time we got to our destination, but still delicious. We'd only managed to eat one each, so we each had another with our breakfast, because that's what one does on vacation, right? (We left the last two for the next airbnb inhabitants.)
Magic Ooh!
We packed up our stuff, and headed out for a long ride northeast to Uppsala.
Normal pattern upon arrival at airbnb: park bikes, begin painful removal of all bags, haul bags into airbnb, drop bags right inside door and just leave them there until we depart. So organized.
After bidding adieu to the alpacas.
They did not particularly care.
This time we paid more attention to where Matt's phone wanted us to go, and we rode on gravel for maybe 5 minutes, and then on a HIGHWAY! Where it was PAVED! So much better.
It was a very lovely day.
If that were Osttuna, it would mean "Cheesetuna". But those two darn dots ruin it. (East Tuna.)
As we were planning this trip, and debating the merits of traveling with a touring group versus traveling solo, Matt said he wanted to be a little loose with the planning so that if we saw a castle off in the distance, we could just go off course and ride over to see it. Finally, on day 17, that happened!
Strömsholms Slott
It's still not exactly "ancient castle", but it's one of my favorite castles from the trip.
So that was a delightful little random gem at the beginning of this long day.
Randomtrain.
Our next excitement was coming into Västerås (basically pronounced like Westeros, Game of Thrones fans). Västerås is one of the largest cities between Oslo and Stockholm, so Matt knew it would be his best bet for finding someone to look at his front brake, which was still broken. Also our best bet for lunch.
What we hadn't anticipated was also coming across our first fellow bike tourer in Västerås! We'd seen that one group tour outside Leer, Germany, and we'd seen one fellow going the opposite direction in the streets of Oslo, but otherwise we were the only loaded-down folks we'd seen out there.
This fellow rode up beside us and we rode and chatted together for a bit. He was headed up to the north point of Norway, but stopped off in Västerås to get a vaccination against some tick-borne disease (not lyme). Because he is a bolder man than we are, and was camping. Evidently he lives in the Hague. Quit his job as a long-haul truck driver, bought a crazy and amazing contraption of a bike, went by Copenhagen to visit the manufacturers of his bike, and was now headed for points north. After stopping off at a med clinic.
It was fun to compare notes with a fellow crazy person, and he was a really nice guy.
Check out that crazy bike.
Remember how I said we broke that sun-rain-sun-rain pattern we had going on? Yeah, turns out no. After we parted ways with our fellow tourer, it started to sprinkle. And then rain. And eventually pour.
We managed to find the first bike shop on Matt's list while it was just sprinkling, and there was some sort of restaurant right next to it, so that would have been PERFECT. Just in time to get out of the rain, and could grab lunch while we waited for them to look at the bike. Unfortunately the bike shop was really small and the few employees looked busy, so Matt wanted to go try the other, larger bike shop on his list.
As we pulled back out to the road, it started to pour. Of course.
My brakes squeak. From "sometimes barely noticeable" to "HOLY HELL SHUT UP ALREADY", depending on the conditions.
We made it to the second bike shop, and it was MUCH bigger, and they were able to look at Matt's bike immediately. We hunkered down inside and enjoyed being dry while they checked it out, and discovered he needed new brake pads. Which they were able to replace!
Thank you, Cykloteket!
Matt had used this time to research some lunch options, and once Matt got his bike back, we headed back out into the rain. It started raining even harder at that point, so I was very happy to get back off the bike and duck into a cute little Swedish cafeteria, where we got to really try Swedish meatballs for the first time!
It was delicious, though I was moderately concerned after the cheeseburger incident that I would come to regret this lunch. Fortunately this time I had no future fallout!
Even more fortunately, while we were eating, the rain died off, and it was sunny again when we went back outside!
And it really turned into a lovely day for the next few hours.
This was so beautiful, and unfortunately the video just doesn't do it justice.
There were adorable cows.
Oreo cows!
Also there were evidently more bugs in Matt's helmet.
There were several of these cool stone markers that were all throughout Sweden, which Matt says are runestones.
Ugh, fine, Matt says this one is actually a memorial to some battle.
THIS one is a runestone, though.
Things got a little sketchy as we finally neared Uppsala. We ended up on a pretty busy highway for a stretch, and that was definitely neither of our favorite parts. But fortunately it didn't last all that long.
And then we were in Uppsala! Which is ostensibly where our accommodation was.
Except after a day of moderate success with avoiding Sweden's gravel "bike paths", google maps tricked us by leading us down what looked like a regular road, which then suddenly turned into a gravel path. UGH.
Maybe it's just a short little path?
And it didn't end. It just kept going. At one point we realized we were riding through the middle of a golf course?
My optimism that the trail turned back into dirt just ahead was not rewarded. More gravel.
We kept thinking "Well, when we get into Uppsala proper, this will surely become paved," but the gravel JUST KEPT GOING. There were people riding the opposite direction, and they all had "I'm commuting home from work" or "I'm riding around for fun" looks on their faces, despite the gravel. We probably had looks of complete desperation on our faces.
You can see it's getting darker here, because it's pretty late at this point. You can also barely hear Matt say, "Yay, dirt!" as it turns into a more-dirt-than-gravel path again.
After 10 endless miles, which took us almost 90 minutes, the path did become paved again, and we came into Uppsala proper.
Uppsala is a cute little town, very college town, lots of students wandering. That made for some bike and pedestrian traffic in spots, but mostly it was a pretty decent ride through town on appointed, PAVED, bike paths.
Well, paved with cobblestones. Which is sorta better?
Unfortunately that storm had followed us, and the sky was looking very threatening. It was starting to get dark, and very windy (headwind, which we'd mostly been avoiding this trip), and we knew it wasn't going to be very long until that storm caught up to us and made for some very uncomfortable, and very dark, riding.
We were both hungry, because it was almost 9pm at this point, but we wanted to push through and get to our airbnb before the storm hit. We decided we'd find food close to where we were staying, or maybe have something delivered, which was something we hadn't tried so far on this trip.
We realized as we kept riding into ever-more-rural areas that our airbnb was not in Uppsala proper, but outside of town. The purely residential outside of town. But with the storm coming, we were committed to this course of action.
We wound through a very rural, sparse neighborhood, and finally found our accommodation for the night.
That's the light inside, not a reflection of the sun.
Our host came out and met us, and as she gave us a (very short, because the place was very small) tour, Matt asked if there were any places around that delivered out here. She misunderstood at first, and started listing places that were driveable, and then realized we meant having food brought out to us. And she said she didn't know of any, but would ask her husband.
As we unpacked, we got a message from her saying no, there were no places that delivered. And just then, the storm hit.
So we were stuck there with no way to go obtain food, and no way to have food brought to us, and we'd just ridden 85 miles and were very tired and hungry.
Which means we basically ate All The Stuff We Had Left In Our Bags. We had one piece of pita bread left, so we stuffed the couple pieces of lunch meat and cheese into that pita and split it. We had quite a few chips. We had half a bag of mixed nuts. We had two half packages of misc cookies. We had a few mini cinnamon buns. It wasn't much, and it wasn't enough, but it was all we had, and we were too tired to even care that it wasn't enough.
Dinner of champions.
We ate, showered, and fell asleep once Matt made his phone make white noise to drown out the sounds of our neighbors' music.
Total miles for day 17: 85.35 miles, which was our longest day for the whole trip
The heels of our hands ached, and we both had numbness through various digits. We both had achey knees. Our new normal was a mild state of dehydration. And now we were starting our longest ride of the entire trip: 82 miles. It was going to be a long day.
But we were excited to be so close to the end! And we were still having fun. And we still liked each other, which is never a foregone conclusion on an adventure like this.
AND we broke the pattern! The day before was sunny, and looking out the window, this day was ALSO sunny! Yay!
I had gotten ice cream bars for dessert the night before, not realizing how many miles we still had left to get to our house, and how very slowly we were going to ride those miles. They were pretty melted by the time we got to our destination, but still delicious. We'd only managed to eat one each, so we each had another with our breakfast, because that's what one does on vacation, right? (We left the last two for the next airbnb inhabitants.)
Magic Ooh!
We packed up our stuff, and headed out for a long ride northeast to Uppsala.
Normal pattern upon arrival at airbnb: park bikes, begin painful removal of all bags, haul bags into airbnb, drop bags right inside door and just leave them there until we depart. So organized.
After bidding adieu to the alpacas.
They did not particularly care.
This time we paid more attention to where Matt's phone wanted us to go, and we rode on gravel for maybe 5 minutes, and then on a HIGHWAY! Where it was PAVED! So much better.
It was a very lovely day.
If that were Osttuna, it would mean "Cheesetuna". But those two darn dots ruin it. (East Tuna.)
As we were planning this trip, and debating the merits of traveling with a touring group versus traveling solo, Matt said he wanted to be a little loose with the planning so that if we saw a castle off in the distance, we could just go off course and ride over to see it. Finally, on day 17, that happened!
Strömsholms Slott
It's still not exactly "ancient castle", but it's one of my favorite castles from the trip.
So that was a delightful little random gem at the beginning of this long day.
Click to viewRandomtrain.
Our next excitement was coming into Västerås (basically pronounced like Westeros, Game of Thrones fans). Västerås is one of the largest cities between Oslo and Stockholm, so Matt knew it would be his best bet for finding someone to look at his front brake, which was still broken. Also our best bet for lunch.
What we hadn't anticipated was also coming across our first fellow bike tourer in Västerås! We'd seen that one group tour outside Leer, Germany, and we'd seen one fellow going the opposite direction in the streets of Oslo, but otherwise we were the only loaded-down folks we'd seen out there.
This fellow rode up beside us and we rode and chatted together for a bit. He was headed up to the north point of Norway, but stopped off in Västerås to get a vaccination against some tick-borne disease (not lyme). Because he is a bolder man than we are, and was camping. Evidently he lives in the Hague. Quit his job as a long-haul truck driver, bought a crazy and amazing contraption of a bike, went by Copenhagen to visit the manufacturers of his bike, and was now headed for points north. After stopping off at a med clinic.
It was fun to compare notes with a fellow crazy person, and he was a really nice guy.
Check out that crazy bike.
Remember how I said we broke that sun-rain-sun-rain pattern we had going on? Yeah, turns out no. After we parted ways with our fellow tourer, it started to sprinkle. And then rain. And eventually pour.
We managed to find the first bike shop on Matt's list while it was just sprinkling, and there was some sort of restaurant right next to it, so that would have been PERFECT. Just in time to get out of the rain, and could grab lunch while we waited for them to look at the bike. Unfortunately the bike shop was really small and the few employees looked busy, so Matt wanted to go try the other, larger bike shop on his list.
As we pulled back out to the road, it started to pour. Of course.
My brakes squeak. From "sometimes barely noticeable" to "HOLY HELL SHUT UP ALREADY", depending on the conditions.
We made it to the second bike shop, and it was MUCH bigger, and they were able to look at Matt's bike immediately. We hunkered down inside and enjoyed being dry while they checked it out, and discovered he needed new brake pads. Which they were able to replace!
Thank you, Cykloteket!
Matt had used this time to research some lunch options, and once Matt got his bike back, we headed back out into the rain. It started raining even harder at that point, so I was very happy to get back off the bike and duck into a cute little Swedish cafeteria, where we got to really try Swedish meatballs for the first time!
It was delicious, though I was moderately concerned after the cheeseburger incident that I would come to regret this lunch. Fortunately this time I had no future fallout!
Even more fortunately, while we were eating, the rain died off, and it was sunny again when we went back outside!
And it really turned into a lovely day for the next few hours.
This was so beautiful, and unfortunately the video just doesn't do it justice.
There were adorable cows.
Oreo cows!
Also there were evidently more bugs in Matt's helmet.
There were several of these cool stone markers that were all throughout Sweden, which Matt says are runestones.
Ugh, fine, Matt says this one is actually a memorial to some battle.
THIS one is a runestone, though.
Things got a little sketchy as we finally neared Uppsala. We ended up on a pretty busy highway for a stretch, and that was definitely neither of our favorite parts. But fortunately it didn't last all that long.
And then we were in Uppsala! Which is ostensibly where our accommodation was.
Except after a day of moderate success with avoiding Sweden's gravel "bike paths", google maps tricked us by leading us down what looked like a regular road, which then suddenly turned into a gravel path. UGH.
Maybe it's just a short little path?
And it didn't end. It just kept going. At one point we realized we were riding through the middle of a golf course?
My optimism that the trail turned back into dirt just ahead was not rewarded. More gravel.
We kept thinking "Well, when we get into Uppsala proper, this will surely become paved," but the gravel JUST KEPT GOING. There were people riding the opposite direction, and they all had "I'm commuting home from work" or "I'm riding around for fun" looks on their faces, despite the gravel. We probably had looks of complete desperation on our faces.
You can see it's getting darker here, because it's pretty late at this point. You can also barely hear Matt say, "Yay, dirt!" as it turns into a more-dirt-than-gravel path again.
After 10 endless miles, which took us almost 90 minutes, the path did become paved again, and we came into Uppsala proper.
Uppsala is a cute little town, very college town, lots of students wandering. That made for some bike and pedestrian traffic in spots, but mostly it was a pretty decent ride through town on appointed, PAVED, bike paths.
Well, paved with cobblestones. Which is sorta better?
Unfortunately that storm had followed us, and the sky was looking very threatening. It was starting to get dark, and very windy (headwind, which we'd mostly been avoiding this trip), and we knew it wasn't going to be very long until that storm caught up to us and made for some very uncomfortable, and very dark, riding.
We were both hungry, because it was almost 9pm at this point, but we wanted to push through and get to our airbnb before the storm hit. We decided we'd find food close to where we were staying, or maybe have something delivered, which was something we hadn't tried so far on this trip.
We realized as we kept riding into ever-more-rural areas that our airbnb was not in Uppsala proper, but outside of town. The purely residential outside of town. But with the storm coming, we were committed to this course of action.
We wound through a very rural, sparse neighborhood, and finally found our accommodation for the night.
That's the light inside, not a reflection of the sun.
Our host came out and met us, and as she gave us a (very short, because the place was very small) tour, Matt asked if there were any places around that delivered out here. She misunderstood at first, and started listing places that were driveable, and then realized we meant having food brought out to us. And she said she didn't know of any, but would ask her husband.
As we unpacked, we got a message from her saying no, there were no places that delivered. And just then, the storm hit.
So we were stuck there with no way to go obtain food, and no way to have food brought to us, and we'd just ridden 85 miles and were very tired and hungry.
Which means we basically ate All The Stuff We Had Left In Our Bags. We had one piece of pita bread left, so we stuffed the couple pieces of lunch meat and cheese into that pita and split it. We had quite a few chips. We had half a bag of mixed nuts. We had two half packages of misc cookies. We had a few mini cinnamon buns. It wasn't much, and it wasn't enough, but it was all we had, and we were too tired to even care that it wasn't enough.
Dinner of champions.
We ate, showered, and fell asleep once Matt made his phone make white noise to drown out the sounds of our neighbors' music.
Total miles for day 17: 85.35 miles, which was our longest day for the whole trip