We have made it to the Arctic Circle near Rovaniemi Finland next to Santa’s village. On the 21 June 11 took a photo at midnight standing on the Arctic Circle (yes it is marked here) there is also a live webcam. We are staying here for a couple of nights for Steven to catch up on some work and to take a break from driving.
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| The Arctic Circle at Santa’s Village Midnight |
We have had some technical problems with blog pages not uploading and photos still will not upload. Will upload photos as soon as we can. So in summary:
We have had a good trip to get here, walked around Copenhagen for a day visiting the major attractions. Parked the hymermobile at the Vestamager metro station and caught the train into Copenhagan. These are driverless trains so we sat in the two front seats!! Spent the day exploring the city, including the Trivoli Gardens, the national museum and walked to the old town of Christianshavn. Must have walked 15k or more. Returned to Vestamager to find the hymermobile still there. We were going to go back to Dragor to stay the night but when on the motorway decided to keep going over the Oresunde bridge to Malmo Sweden.
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| Lakeside Camping Finland Late At Night |
The best overnight stop was at Vadstena right next to the castle moat on the lake shore, or was it next to the lake at Storvik where Steven caught his first fish right next to the Motor home 4 pike and a perch (redfin)?
The long distance coaches in Sweden and Finland have on board wifi. The opportunity presented itself to send and receive emails while on the move. So Steven set up his phone and caught up to the bus and yes we receive our emails while logged onto a bus wifi at 90kph. modern technology!! Until the bus stopped at a bus stop anyway.
Trish spotted her first wild deer near Ljungby. Passing through Motala we were fortunate to come across the Vätternrundan (pronounced vet-turn-rund-an) a bicycle recreational ride around Lake Vättern in Sweden. This ride is held in mid-June every year. The distance is 300 km, with start and finish in the town of Motala. for more than 50K we past a never ending line of cyclists (even a few gorillas on bikes to fast for our camera). Fortunately they were all going in the opposite direction or it would have been a very slow drive. We later found out that this years event was limited to 22,000 participants!! Approximately 25% of the participants come from outside Sweden with over 35 nations represented.
Another roadside overnight stop next to a lake at Storvik, It has started raining but Steven dug out the fishing gear and threw a lure out into the lake next to the hymermobile, a redfin was landed after a couple of casts then three pike and finally a larger pike of around 2k 18″. steven recalled that pike were boney so threw them back. The redfin was for dinner.
We will continue to head north from Santa’s Village tomorrow we have decided to go to Gamvik (71 deg North) in Finnmark as our final Northern destination. It is more isolated and not commercialised like Northkapp which has over 200,000 visitors over the summer and will cost us the best part of a A$1000.00 in road tolls and entrance fees!!! And although the tourist info states otherwise it is not in fact the most northerly place in mainland Europe!!
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| Lakeside Camping Finland |
Hopefully the blog server will start behaving and we can upload some photos.