Two to three months into the first lockdown, winter came to Peru. In our small, walled-in hotel outside Ica it was still hot during the day but the nights were cold. The dining-room was open to the entire garden and soon became too chilly for everyone but Fran. Darkness descended early, at the supermarket the beer and alcohol bottles were still locked behind metal grids in the booze aisle so I’d get ready for bed. By 8:00 PM I was under the covers, by 8:05 in Sweden or Denmark.
I always thought of escapism as fleeing to somewhere beautiful from somewhere that’s not. But now I know it's just to somewhere different. The place we were trapped in was, for me, Paradise Found. There were palm and banana trees, vast sand dunes and when the supermoon came, I shivered with the pleasure of watching it from such an untamed corner of the world. Apart from wanting to be back on the road, I never once wished I was somewhere else. But every night I disappeared into shadowy streets that no northern lights would ever penetrate, slick rainy cities that I didn’t even particularly want to visit in real life. Go figure. The series The Bridge became my nocturnal world and at the beginning and end of every episode, I got to fly over the Øresund Bridge. The haunting theme song became synonymous with that time and place and to this day I cannot hear it without finding myself back there.
“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware*.” It’s a comforting thought that helps give some meaning to life while it’s unravelling. The consolation prize for missing out on our longed-for destination was about to be presented. One Saturday morning, years earlier than expected, we found ourselves crossing the Øresund strait, fulfilling that bedtime promise to drive The Bridge. The German word “strahlend” keeps coming to mind for the day was simply radiant, suffused with a shining, glittering brilliance. Plunging into the darkness of the Drogden Tunnel we came out on the island of Peberholm 4k later and sailed onto the bridge. If there is a Wild Blue Yonder, then this was it. Hovering between sea and sky the sun beamed down like a white gold trolley pole linking us to heaven as we clung to the last silken threads of Earth.
Still high in spirit, we sidestepped Malmö and headed north. The first thing I noticed about Sweden was its greenness. After drought-ridden Europe the wild flowers waving in the median were as fresh as spring. They’d even planted trees on their overpasses for God’s sakes. But the euphoria of the Sound soon disappeared in a blast of wind. We shouldn’t have been surprised, it'd been our unwelcome companion since Spain. This time it was very bad. We slowed down to 60k, more to go easy on Pferdi than a concern for fuel. The miles went down like cold treacle, the view from the sidecar was stuck on “Pause” and squirming in my seat, the bellow of the gale couldn’t mask Pferdi’s groans.
We stopped in the countryside near Gothenburg. The small apartment had a wooden deck nudged into a corner of the forest. We were living in a grove of Christmas trees and told to watch out for moose. Out front were green pastures and horse farms, red barns and a silver train that glided back and forth to Gothenburg with a swoosh. We took a ride one day from the sunny, all-glass Hede station. No staff, no other waiting passengers. On board, we got on our hands and knees to read the English payment instructions, frantically waving the credit card. (Sophisticated international travellers? I think not.) Sweden was slightly cheaper than Denmark but even a baguette had to be paid for with a credit card, and we still had to fuel at unmanned gas stations which I didn’t like.
After so long on the bike we just parked it and walked, finding an iron age settlement, a closed school with a yard full of echoes and a small cemetery. With graves sheltered by a red and white church, the setting was so perfectly pastoral it would be impossible to muster up any tears. Everywhere we went the streets were spotless with the local population obviously very diligent about “plockaring upp efter their hunds”. One day a neighbour stopped to chat as we admired his yellow wooden house. He was building a child’s playhouse in the garden and both buildings looked like they’d just hopped off the front of the Playmobil village box. Hearing we’d driven from Portugal, the conversation took an unusual turn when he said he’d considered moving there. Unfortunately the tax system wasn’t to his liking so Africa was now a distinct possibility. He had relatives in Uganda or Kenya, or both, they’d been there for at least 100 years, and tax-wise they were much more civilized places. After that there didn’t seem to be much more to say so we just said good-bye.
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After seven weeks in hotels and other people’s houses, the days in Sweden were blessedly tranquil. The summer’s bright evenings were cooled by premium pilsners with a “Frisk and Aromatisk Smak” while we watched a man on a tractor stack plastic-wrapped haybales in marshmallow colours. It was during this time Fran pinned me down to have the dreaded “Talk about Norway”. In the months of pandemic waiting, this had been our mini-goal until bigger plans could be made but we’d underestimated the chaos of summer in Europe. Our biggest mistake was to imprint the languorous digressions of our old life onto this continent. Travelling with no plan didn’t work here and Norwegian research proved to be more Northern Frights than Northern Lights. If a bed was even found, we’d have to give up eating and everyone knows you can’t survive on scenery. It was so much worse than we’d anticipated. Oslo was only 300k away but Nordkapp was 3,000. After finding an available pallet at €120.00 per night in a campsite of large industrial pipes, I gave up. Going there would have been a Scott decision when we knew in our hearts the Shackleton admission was the right one. What goes up still needs to come down and in the end “Norway? No Way!” was the best choice we could have made.
After that the mood felt lighter. We went back to our old habit of enjoying the journey instead of being ruled by the destination. The mantra “El Camino es el Destino” had been drummed into us often enough by tattooed Mexican bikers and I felt ashamed we’d wandered so far off our usual course. Cosseted by the green forest, we extended our stay to drive shorter distances. The quiet roads meandered towards a horizon so low even Pferdi felt tall. That lasted until he rounded a corner and Tjoloholms Slott rose out of the plains giving us a reason for a cultural stop and more importantly to eat our sandwiches. In the Kungsbackafjorden families bathed in the shallow waters, rather like pilgrims gathered in the Ganges, and vast stretches of rustling, reedy grasses protected poppy and hollyhock-covered hamlets from a lonely sea. The people we met along the way were not at all like I imagined. I’d yet to see a blond Adonis or a platinum Boadicea on either a Gothenburg street or Höglanda lane. This was a relief. Feeling slovenly and bedraggled after all the lockdowns, I’d worried the population would look like they’d stepped out of a Patagonia or North Face catalogue but really, they didn’t look much different to us. Just better dressed.
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By the time we’d had our fill of the realigned summit, the credit card had $1,200.00 of temporary holds on gas purchases and it was time for the descent. A goodbye dinner with our hosts was reminiscent of the old days where unexpected get-togethers make friends of strangers in spite of neither party speaking the same language. It’s what had been missing since that first lockdown, the peopling of an empty mapꭞ. If the scenery causes you to smile, then it’s the locals that make you laugh. Climbing back on Pferdi we wandered the countryside where the biggest excitement was being refused the use of a toilet (a first). Back in the south in a turquoise-coloured container that called itself the Good Morning Hotel - Lund, we sat on the bed eating Ramen noodles. As long as we didn’t stand up together there was plenty of space. Tomorrow Denmark would be ahead and Sweden sadly behind. Going back the way we came was something we only ever did under huge duress but we’d get to drive that bridge again. Peru’s promise was done and dusted and after 7,000k it was time to give Pferdi a rest. He had a rendezvous in Hamburg with someone who’d been generous with Ural advice across the miles since our 2017 departure. It was high time we put a face to that empty part of the map.
Where It All Began
* “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware." (Martin Buber)
ꭞ “….to people an empty map.” Shadow of the Silk Road (Colin Thubron)