Reine is one of those places that looks unreal in photographs and looks better in life. A cluster of red and ochre fishing cabins, the rorbuer, stand on stilts at the edge of a narrow fjord, with the sheer spire of Reinebringen rising straight behind them, and the whole scene sits at the southern end of the Lofoten archipelago, a long wall of peaks that rises out of the Norwegian Sea well inside the Arctic Circle. Only a few hundred people live in the village, and in summer the number of visitors dwarfs them.
The fishing is what put Reine on the map. For a thousand years cod have come to spawn off Lofoten in winter, and the fishermen hang them on wooden racks to dry in the cold wind, producing stockfish that was exported to Italy and Portugal for centuries. The racks are still there, and so is a certain smell in the air in spring, which you either like or you do not. The Reinebringen mountain has a stone stairway, built by Nepalese Sherpas in recent years, which takes a lot of the damage out of the climb and gives you the view everyone wants.
The riding on the E10 along the islands is as good as Norway offers. The road hops between islands on bridges and causeways, passes through tunnels, and drops to the water at every bay, with mountains close on the left and the sea on the right. The corners are open and the surface is generally good, but the road is narrow, caravans are common in summer and the wind can be fierce on the bridges. Weather swings quickly, with sun and rain in the same hour, so keep the rain gear to hand. In midsummer the sun does not set, and a ride at one in the morning is a strange and beautiful thing.
Services are thin here, and Reine has only small shops and cafes. Fill the tank in Leknes or at one of the larger stations to the north before you head into the southern islands. Book accommodation ahead in July and August, because rooms vanish, and consider September, when the crowds are gone and the northern lights begin to appear.