Norwegian Summer 2026 – Day 14: Kongsberg to Horten

Breakfast at the hotel first, which by now is a familiar routine: pile up the plates, eat what we can, and hope it holds. I’ll be honest, we haven’t been too hungry in the mornings, which is not ideal when there’s a full day of pedaling waiting for you. Coffee gets me moving, and that’s about the only caffeine we take on all day.

Sleep has mostly been good on this trip, but last night was not the greatest. Norway played Brazil in the World Cup, which over here is a very big deal, and the match didn’t even kick off until 11pm our time. I stayed up to watch. Then around 1am the whole town decided to celebrate, car horns and yelling that kept going and going.

We had our biggest climb of the day right out of the gate, which was fine by me. Less fine was that I totally miscalculated the temperature and went out wearing too much. About five minutes into a twenty-minute grind through the upper suburbs of Kongsberg, we pulled over to shed our tights. Then a second quick stop at the REMA 1000 to grab a bag of gummies for the day’s fuel.

Without meaning to, we found ourselves on national cycle route #4. (Remember, yesterday we were on #5.) So Kongsberg is really a bit of a crossroads.

We crested the climb and then descended for a long time, about five miles, down to a lake called Eikeren. Like a lot of Norwegian lakes, it’s long (10+ miles) and skinny (less than a mile across). We needed to reach the far end, and we had a choice: the north side or the south side. Our routing had us on the north, but that’s the busier road, and I’d heard good things about the south shore if you’re the gravel-loving type. Quick sidebar, and Liz and I decided to give the south route a shot.

There was some mixed messaging at the turnoff. I’d known going in that the road was closed to through traffic for cars but that bikes could get past. One sign confirmed that. Another just said road closed. The distances matched up and it seemed right to me. Liz was less convinced.

Well. A kilometer and a half in, and a few construction barriers hopped, we ran into a complete lack of road.

Argh. At least we found a nice quiet spot for Liz to use the facilities. Well. back we went, 30 minutes lost on a day when we might need every one of them.

Off the defined cycle route now, winging our way east. We got back onto the north side, and an hour or so later we were past the lake and working toward the Oslo Fjord. A bit of traffic had us a little stressed, but on the way out of the lake valley a separated bike/ped lane appeared and we could finally relax.

We had no idea how long the path would last, but we were glad to take it. Turns out it carried us the rest of the day, about 25 miles of it. Super fortunate, though not entirely luck. I’d planned the route using rider heatmaps (basically letting the crowd show you the good lines, for the map nerds), and that plus Norway’s genuinely great infrastructure did the rest.

We stopped for lunch about 30 minutes shy of Holmestrand on the coast, then blasted down to sea level, our first time down there since Flåm! From there we turned south and followed the coast toward Horten.

A bit more noodling around and we rolled into Horten. We turned off the GPS and just wandered until we managed  to track down our hotel.

Overall, an 82km day, the longest of the trip. About 2800ft of climbing, but nicely spread out with no brutal gradients, and 5+ hours in total. We splurged and hit our first proper restaurant of the trip (unless you count the plant-based Whopper on day 1), an Indian place two blocks from the hotel. I think our server was a little amazed at how much food two cyclists could pack away. 😂

Tomorrow we catch that ferry!