Registration open for North Cape 4000 ultracycling event (+ video)

Fancy riding 4,300km self-supported to the Arctic Circle? Thought you did. You should sign up for this year’s North Cape 4000.

Now in its third year, the North Cape 4000 is a little different to other ultracycling events in that you ride a prescribed route.

This year riders will start in Turin and pass through 10 countries, heading ever northwards, until they reach North Cape on the northern coast of the island of Magerøya in Norway.

The 2018 edition was won by sometime road.cc contributor Dr Ian Walker, who works in the Psychology department at the University of Bath. We spoke to him and had a gander at his bike afterwards – you can see that video here. (Walker is also known for having once donned a long brunette wig as part of a project to show how much space motorists give different kinds of cyclists.)

The 2019 route is completely on asphalt and the organisers promise that “not even a metre” of it overlaps with the two previous routes.

Riders will cross the Alps via the Great St Bernard, skirt the Swiss lakes and the river Rhine and then head through the Ardennes to Bastogne.

From there, it’s on through Lower Saxony to the Danish countryside and the Swedish and Norwegian forests and finally to North Cape.

The race begins on July 27 and if you sign up this month, entry costs €357. You can find more details on the website. (There’ll also be a tracker once they’re underway if you prefer to do your riding-thousands-of-kilometres-to-the-Arctic-Circle vicariously.)