I woke to leaden skies over Bodø, but at least the rain of last night was in abeyance. I was still in two minds over which route to take - the 17 looked the more picturesque, but the satnav told me that it would take 16 hours to cover roughly 500 km, what with all the ferries. The E6 looked interesting in its own right, following rivers and lakes, and again the satnav suggested I could reach Trondheim by the end of the day, some 700 km.

But that was without the bloody roadworks! Long stretches of the E6 are being upgraded (or degraded from a motorcyclist's point of view, as they are getting rid of a lot of fabulous twisty bits), with 50 kph speed limits in force and sections operating a convoy system.

And on top of that, I seem to have acquired an infection in my left ear - putting in my ear plug is agony. Feels like a boil in the outer ear canal. I've been applying an antiseptic cream in the hope that will help clear it up.

Net result was that I stopped for the night well short of where I hoped to be.

But on the plus side, I found a nice campsite with possibly the world's smallest hytte for only slightly more than the cost of a pitch for the tent. I think I am going soft :-)

Along the way, I passed through some magnificent scenery, including the last vestiges of Arctic landscape, crossed the Arctic circle again, and saw a spectacular waterfall that doesn't seem to feature in the guidebooks (I guess there are just too many to mention them all). And mile after mile of rivers just begging to be fished, and no one fishing. So much water, so little time. Fingers crossed I will get the fishing rod out tomorrow on the Atlantic Road.

I also had my one and only minor 'breakdown' of the trip. I was merrily barrelling along a stretch of the E6 where it crosses a pretty bleak, open upland area, with the ever present wind and horizontal rain when a warning light came on on the instrument panel -- the one with the exclamation mark in a triangle, the graphical equivalent of "boo!". Not helpful, but a few seconds later the message "Lamp" popped up. Oddly, before I had left home I had bought a set of spare bulbs -- something I had never carried in the past. So it looked like they were going to be of use. I pulled off onto the hard shoulder and worked my way through the various lights, until I discovered it was the headlight (dipped beam) bulb that had gone. I still had my "sidelight", so I decided to keep going to the first petrol station, get out of the wind and rain and change the bulb there. So I rode on to Mo I Rana and the first station. Out with the handbook -- great, looks simple. On with the latex gloves, out with the dead bulb, in with the new bulb. All sorted, no time flat. But when I switched the ignition on, the same fault message was there, and the new bulb didn't light up. Damn! That'll teach me to buy Halford's own brand! Into the station, buy another bulb (NOK 99!), repeat the process -- same result! What is going on here? I switched the ignition off, back on, back off -- trying the same thing again and again, hoping for a different result. And then, the headlight was back. Maybe the canbus system took a while to reset itself? I don't know, but it was a hell of a relief.

On the topic of landscapes, the shape of the peaks on the mainland is totally different from that on the Lofoten islands. There, they are jagged, sharp-edged, while here they are more rounded, almost softer. I wonder what caused the difference. Did the ice sheet not reach the Lofoten islands during the last ice age? (Answers on a postcard...)