Day 3 - Karasjok to Kautokeino (approx. 128km)

Woke up early and decided to go for a run before the day's ride. After about 5 minuted of running I had to take my thirst off as it was very hot. I ran around the town's streets and went down a couple of tracks leading into the forests which were nice and my iPod helped me along. I was back at the campsite in just over an hour having covered a very leisurely 7 miles. The others were up by now so I whacked out the speaker and got the morning music session going as I packed up the tent. I then went into the lounge area and joined the others for breakfast. Chris managed to spill the bag of corn flakes all over the floor so proceeded to scoop them into his bowl with his hands before eating. He'd had a better nights sleep in the room he room adjoining the lounge area than any of us did in the camp field. We were all a bit jealous of this. We ended up setting off for the supermarket eating session in town at around 10.30. After maybe an hour we made our way out of town towards today's destination of Kautokeino. It was yet another hot and sunny start (a little cooler than yesterday but still pretty hot). The road was long and not very exciting and I was slacking a bit. At one stage a reindeer ran ahead of me in the middle of the road for about 3km until a car passed causing it to run into the bushes. The sunny weather turned cloudy as the earlier part of the ride went on and there were a few rain showers. These were a welcome bit of rest bite from the in need constant sun. I was riding with the girls now and had a good chat with Kinza about the summer project which was a welcome distraction from focussing solely on cycling. The terrain was a mixture of flat and up and down which was nice. We had a nice first lunch by a stream at the side of the deserted road in the middle of nowhere and Kinza gave me an energy tablet as i was in need of a boost. After a few more hours and after the energy tablet had well and truly kicked in I decided to up the pace as wanted to get to Kautokeino before the supermarket closed. The last 20k into Kautokeino seemed never ending and the km's really dragged Made worse by the fact that I was running very low on energy. I found myself spontaneously bursting into spouts of laughter at random silly things as i had also been on several the previous few days. Eventually I made it to Kautokeino and thankfully about 10 minutes before the supermarket closed. I was running very low on krone so the shopping had to go on the card. I bought a bit more than normal on this occasion due to the fact it was all going on the card and got a massive baguette, jar of peanut butter, ice cream, milk and chocolate. The milk turned out to be thick condensed stuff more like cream (a classic case of trying to guess what an item is by looking at the packaging due to not being able to understand the writing on the label) but tasted alright. After a short ride to the campsite the hysteria kicked in and we were all in silly moods especially Tom who was running around as we'll as doing the standard impersonations (David Brent and 'The Colonel' spring to mind). We sorted the tents out after more snacking and then came the highlight - Tom had cooked a load of spaghetti and beans which was the first cooked meal I had since leaving home so was very welcome. After this I went to check out the shower hoping it would be free as spent the last of my krone on the tent pitch. The showers were the standard 10 krone so i resorted to having a slaggy splash with some showergel by the sinks where the toilets/showres were.The campsite unlike the previous two we stayed in had free wifi so I was able to borrow Michelle's iPad and finally make a start on this blog :) . As ever the blog writing took ages and I was sitting on the sofa outside the campsite reception until probably 2.30am before going to bed. Highlights: the morning run, the spaghetti and beans, finally getting to start the blog.