12 September 2002 - Watch out Santa - Here we come!
Wednesday began slowly. And painfully. With stinking hangovers.

No prizes for guessing that we missed breakfast. Actually we woke up after we were meant to have checked out, but hey, we are meant to be on holiday after all.

Hazy memories of agreeing to drive up through Lappland floated to the surface as we staggered unsteadily out into the blinding Swedish sun looking for food.

Not a greasy spoon in sight.

A small misinterpretation of a menu later and Al settled down to his chicken, cheese, curry, salad, gherkin, pepper, mustard and mayo sandwich. Mmmm, yummy. Surprisingly effective at dealing with the hangover munchies, it wasn't actually what he was after...

Loathe to leave the air-con of the car with such hideous hangovers, the planned photo-call of Sundsvall was abandoned in favour of driving carefully north. A quick look over the map revealed a distinct lack of towns to the north. A quick look at the GPS maps revealed that we only had another 100 miles or so of digital map data. This was mildly scary. The map becomes a big empty space. With some blue bits in it. Hmmm.

After about 80 miles up the coast, the roads gave up trying to be good quality, trans-Scandinavian routes and reverted back to badly surface, twisty local roads - again the average speed had dropped severely. Shortly after Utansjo we encountered our first proper rally tracks - fifteen miles of dirt track through the forests around the shores of a lake. Never one to miss a chance to prove his finely honed 'Grand Turismo 3' skills, Dan set about setting some interesting records involving quite a lot of hand-brake, an enormous amount of dust and a pinch of sideways travelling. Strictly necessary it wasn't, but highly entertaining it certainly was.

Having rejoined the 'A' road (it was technically 'a' road) we began to follow the lakes inland, branching off from the coast roads in a north westerly direction towards the mountains. Still gorgeously sunny, but pretty darn cold in the shade. 150 miles into the day and we had made it into Lappland! Now we were on the look out for Reindeer as well as the elusive Moose.

The impending edge of digital map data meant that we no longer had any way of telling where our next fuel stop would be, so, after the excitement of seeing our 3rd police car in 2000 miles, we pulled in to the last marked petrol station in the northern hemisphere. A quick check of the oil revealed a surprising lack of the stuff (hmmm, why could that be I wonder...?) so castroled up and fully fuelled, we drove off the map and into the unknown..

Quote of the day:

"What oil should we get?"
"Nothing special, it's not like we're heading for Arctic conditions. Ah..."

Ten miles later we finally saw The Majestic Mouse! 2 inches high, the little feller ran out in front of us as we shot through the forests. Not sure what all the fuss is about, or why they all seem to have huge Mouse Bars over the front of their cars over here (the big jessies), but it was nice to have seen one.

As we came towards the north central town (1 road, 2 houses, no traffic lights) of Storuman, the sun was beginning to set so we decided that we should find a place to camp for the night. In the middle of Lappland, we were actually going to have to do it this time. No towns, no hotels. Certainly no 4 star suites.

Terrifying.

Lake Storuman is 57km long and absolutely stunning. As we wound round the eastern bank, the water was perfectly still and looked like a mirror - pretty picture perfect. We decided to off-road (in a Mini?!) down to the lake shore and camp out in the wilderness. Hardcore, scary, Lappland stylee camping. This was it! The real thing! No poncey EuroCamp nonsense here, oh no. Not even a trouser press or whirly shoe polishing gizmo! Not even pay per view channels!

A quick trek through the forest (literally through the forest, no tracks to follow out here!) and we had arrived at the shore, complete with the Mini and most of its exhaust system. A quick scout round for signs of Moose (they're a bit bitchy apparently) and we reckoned we were safe to put up the tent.

Safe, but totally unable to put up the tent.

Some poles, some sheets, some pegs. Hmmm. Several attempts later (maybe we should have had that dry run on Tooting Bec after all Stu?!) and we made a shelter not dissimilar to a melting igloo in shape. I'm sure there were extra poles in that bag just to throw us off the scent, and putting pegs into solid rock isn't that easy. A beer or so later and it was deemed fit for habitation as we sat by the lake cooking our Swedish meatballs in the middle of nowhere. In fact, by sitting with our backs to the 'tent' as it got dark, it hardly bothered us that it looked like it wouldn't be there in the morning. (Nor did it bother us that we were cooking with lake water not a million miles from where Dan had had to do what Bears usually do in the woods. Noisily.)

The silence of the lake was eerie - the only life round these lakes seems to be the fish. There are no birds, nor any sign of anything in the woods. Total utter silence is actually not something that many people ever get to experience, and it's really quite odd - not even the wind blowing through the trees. Apart from that Dan moment mentioned earlier, obviously. The few cars on the road to the west could be heard 7-8 minutes before they actually appeared - about 8 miles! It was an absolutely amazing place.

An hour or so after it had finally got dark (its some time before sunset and darkness up here) the sky began to change colour in a long stripe. 5 minutes later and the Northern lights were in full effect - streaks of green and hints of orange pulsed and waved about the sky for the next few hours. Totally mind blowing. So mind blowing that one D Chick forgot to swallow his beer before staring up at the sky and almost choked to death.

Resisting the temptation to broadcast some trippy trance choons for 40 miles across the lake, or at least some Pink Floyd, it couldn't be appreciated fully without having something to smoke.

No, really, just cigarettes would have been good at this point ("I'm sure I had some Marlboro Lights in the car earlier...Tart.)

A few hours of talking rubbish and staring at the sky and we ended up sitting in total silence watching the lights in the sky, when a text message arrived from Al's mum.

You have no idea quite how loud a 'phone can be when everything else is that silent. You have no idea how terrifying a 'phone can be when everything else is that silent. The day almost ended with two heart attacks.

Our first night in the wilderness! God knows what the moose thought of the snoring. Fortunately it wasn't mistaken for any mating calls...

More soon...

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First prize in yesterdays competition goes to Mr Alex Reid of Yeovil, Somerset, who correctly identified the missing word - "...it's Scree, you idiots...".

Mr Reid's answer was the first of literally hundreds to reach us! Well done! Your prize, a glacially deposited rock, will be awaiting collection in London upon our return.
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