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NORDKAPP STORIES

A series of tales and portraits of travellers, great and small,
and the vehicles by which they voyaged to the end of the world.

 

“Not just a book for (would be) travellers, but for everyone who loves a good story, told by the best.”
(Het Nieuwsblad, ★★★★)

 

“A beautiful book with photos that depict the emptiness and vastness of the landscape along the way so intensely that you would want to set off immediately.”
Tzum

THE NORTH CAPE is little more than a car park and a gift shop at a misty end of the European continent. Yet it has been a magnet for travellers and oddballs for centuries.

When I reached it myself on my trusty old Vespa one endless summer, I was struck by the atmosphere on that last stretch of road. Little expeditions from all over the world seemed
to come together: weekend warriors, world travellers and asphalt munchers, together en route to the finish line. They had left weeks or months ago, from Germany, Canada, Myanmar or Belgium, on worn-out bicycles, scooters and skateboards, on muddy motorcycles with sidecars full of junk, in their grandfather’s restored old-timer or simply by raising a thumb. All those separate storylines from all over the world converged for a moment there, in the same mythical place.

Together with photographer Rafaël Balrak, I went back to the North Cape to collect some of those tales. Nordkapp Stories is an introduction to that world, a little anthology of peculiar characters and their vehicles. Collected while camping for a week under the midnight sun near that asphalt bookshelf, that last bit of serpentine road to the end of the world.

 


Text: Michael Van Peel
Photography: Rafaël Balrak and Michael Van Peel
Publisher: Pelckmans

 

For a personal, signed copy, contact: merch@michaelvanpeel.be

 

 

VAN PEEL TOT EVENAAR

Antwerpen-Dakar per Vespa

 

 

 

Stand-up comedian and Vespa traveler Michael Van Peel takes you on a journey from Western Europe to West Africa, through the vast sand plains of the Sahara and along the winding paths in his head.

A low-tech travel story about the 10,000 km between Antwerp and Dakar with a 20-year-old Vespa, a map and a compass. Old-fashioned adventure with old-school technology.

He was on the road for fifty days, filled with loneliness and fascinating encounters, sandstorms in the Sahara, corrupt border guards in Mauritania, malaria mosquitoes and swampy mud slopes in the bushes of Senegal. Via detours of course; because the shortest route is rarely the most interesting one.

 


Publisher: Vrijdag

Currently only available in Dutch.

Wanna learn Dutch?

 

Fourth Edition available now!

 

Some quotes (yeah, also in Dutch…)

“Het eigenzinnigste reisboek van het jaar”
(Het Nieuwsblad, ★★★★)

“Stikt van de vermakelijke anekdotes”
(Het Parool, NL)

“Een jongensboek over een man en zijn Vespa dat, net zoals de auteur, overloopt van wijsheid, charisma en flauwe moppen”
(Mark Coenen, De Morgen)

 

Antwerp-Dakar by Vespa on YouTube (with subtitles)

 

 

 

 

© 2025 - Michael Van Peel