ADVENTURE WHEELS & WAVES IN THE ARCTIC CIRCLE

Photographer and keen mountain biker Andy Lloyd sails north of the Arctic Circle to Norway's northern fjords on the cycle trip of a lifetime Now the snow and ice of the long Arctic winter retreats, the summer midnight sun casts warmth over what is fast becoming a mountain biking nirvana amid the deep fjords of northern Norway.

- Andrew Lloyd

We set sail north from the city of Tromsø to Nygårdstranda, Djupvik and into the 50-mile-long Lyngenfjord, an area famed for winter ski-touring and ice climbing. We were aboard a 48ft Fountain Pajot catamaran, Arctic Aurora, sailing day and night to reach our destinations - it was almost never dark.

This was to be one of those bucket list trips, sailing through the fjords north from the Arctic town of Tromsø, jumping off the boat to ride some rarely touched trails. Rarely touched due to the fact that they are under a lot of snow for the majority of the year!

UP NORTH

On our flight north, Ed (the man who has put our Norwegian adventure together) and I bump into the third rider on the trip - young native wheelie enthusiast Thomas Klingenberg. Arriving raring to go at Tromsø airport we immediately hit a hitch, as the airline has managed to misplace two out of three of the bikes between Oslo and Tromsø. Waiting for us at the airport is Ivar, our skipper, who has just returned from an expedition to the polar-bear-inhabited island of Svalbard. He encourages us (me) to commence our journey without the things we needed the most, with the hope that the bikes would catch up soon.

More than a few hours later, Ivar finally points the bow of the Arctic Aurora northwards and we trundle away from the civilisation of Tromsø. Despite it being well into the evening we still have plenty of light as at this time of year (beginning of August) the sun barely drops beneath the horizon for an hour and we sail to our first overnight stop.