Scandinavia

Tuesday, 29th of July. We wanted to get up early, around 7am, so we may leave around 9am. Hilleke had calculated that it was about 541 km from Simo to Kramfors were we had booked two nights in a cabin on a camping. After we had packed everything in the car and had breakfast we said goodbye to Pekka, Aura, Veera, Kaarle and the baby. At a quarter to ten we left. Soon after we crossed the border with Sweden and we left Finland behind. Just across the border we stopped at the Tourist Office in a small town called Kalix. They had free internet there so we were able to email the owner of a cottage were we want to stay after Kramfors. He would return our mail with a description of how to get there. The PC also had a floppydrive so we were also able to upload our website again. About half an hour later we continued and our next stop was in a small town called Piteå. There we had our lunch and we also refueled the car. There was also a Tourist Office with again a free internet connection and we checked whether there was already a reply from Mora and indeed there was. We printed the driving instructions and we continued our way towards Kramfors. Along the way Hilleke calculated the remaining distance to Kramfors and it turned out she had made a miscalculation earlier. She had made a mistake of 100 km, so the total distance is 641 instead of 541 km, a bit of bad luck. And on all these roads with maximum speeds of 110, 90, 70 and 60 kmh we weren't progressing very fast, also because of a lot of road works going on. But on the more quiet roads, Arjan accelerated up to 140 kmh and then you are able to make some progress. After passing the city of Umeå the scenery became more and more beautiful. It turned out that we were driving in an area designated by the Unesco as a World Heritage Site, the 'High Coast'. The town of Kramfors is in the centre of this beautiful area in which you may think you are in Switzerland. Our stay in this area is by 'accident'. Our route planner had planned a stop here on our way from Simo to Dalarna. If we would have known in advance that this was such a beautiful area we would have stayed here for three instead of two nights. At around a quarter past five we arrived at the Flogsta camping, much earlier than we had anticipated. But after our stop in Piteå we hadn't stopped anymore and had driven the whole 380 km in about 4½ hour. Our cabin was rather spacious, much better than the one we had in Tampere. Also no toilet, shower and running water but much larger and it also had kitchen utensils and such. Apart from that it was also cheaper, less noisy and it had a real swimming pool with a large slide. As usual, Ciska and Arjan went for a swim in the pool while Hilleke did some shopping and prepared dinner. All in all a long and tiring day.