Alta calls itself the northern lights town, and it has some right to the claim. The little town on the Alta fjord, about a degree and a half south of the North Cape, has some of the clearest, most dependable aurora in Norway, and visitors travel from across the world in winter to stand in the cold and wait. In summer, the same sky never gets dark, and the midnight sun lights the fjord and the hills for weeks. The nearest large settlement to this stop on the plateau, Alta has about twelve thousand people, and it is thirty-six kilometres away.
Luvdiidcohkka, or Lohdizhjokki in the old spelling, is another of the stations of the Struve Geodetic Arc, the chain of survey points that crossed ten countries. This one stands on high ground in the hills inland from Alta, where birch scrub gives way to open tundra. From here the surveyors could see their next marker across the bare hills, and the clear air of the north helped them. A few of the points are marked by a drilled hole in the rock, others by a cairn, and the whole group was recognised by UNESCO for its scientific history.
Alta has a heritage older than any survey. The rock carvings at Hjemmeluft, a World Heritage site since 1985, contain thousands of figures of reindeer, boats, people and bears, chiselled into the rock between about six and a half thousand and two thousand years ago, and a museum explains them. West of the town the Sautso canyon, one of the biggest in Europe, cuts the plateau with the Alta river, a famous salmon stream that was the centre of a bitter dispute in the 1970s over a dam, a conflict that did much to awaken Sami political life.
The riding is open and wide. The E6, the main north road, runs through Alta, and inland the roads cross rolling tundra with long views, so a bike can cover a lot of ground. Watch for reindeer, and for the wind, which comes off the fjord and plateau without warning. In summer the weather is mostly mild, though a cold front can bring rain and a drop to a few degrees, and in autumn the birches and bogs turn to red and gold.
Alta has all the services you need, with fuel, supermarkets and cafes, and the last chance for a bed and a meal before the empty country. Local dishes include fresh salmon, reindeer, and cloudberry cream. Fill the tank before you leave town.