13 June E61 TREES! and a long road.....

 Imagine looking at this all day!

I awoke early this morning and could not get back to sleep so finally after an hour of so staring at the ceiling I decided to get out of bed and type this blog entry.

It occurred to me that you might wonder why we rushed through Finland so quickly (it was only xxx miles)…….. well I can answer that in a single word…………….

TREES!   actually two words……….TREES and ROADS  (ok, that’s three words).   You see, this part of Northern Europe is all about trees.  As far as the eye can see ………..trees, trees, trees…….with long (very long) roads that take you from one forested area………….through a forested area……….to another forested area!

Don’t get me wrong, I like trees, but after mile after mile after another 100 flipping miles, the novelty wares off!  As if that’s not bad enough, the roads are non stop, I really do mean NON STOP.  Unlike any road in the UK, these roads have no stops, no roundabouts, no traffic lights, they just go on and on and on and on…………… all that changes is the scenery (“oh look at those trees, I’ll swear they are bigger than the other ones”) and the speed limits…….from 100 kph to 60kph through a built up area (now that’s a funny one, by built up they mean the man in the house down the lane with two reindeer and a dog).

Of course I am making light of all this.  The countryside is beautiful, I just want to emphasise the scale and monotony of the forest.  There are also a lot of lakes (thousands) but that’s it………..not much else to see.

Hence our drive through this part of Sweden is more about getting it over with quickly and less about sightseeing on the way.  From our current position (about 55 miles South of Karesuando) it is 360 miles along the E45 to Vilhelmina, which is where we will pick up the ‘Wilderness Road’ and start heading West back towards Norway.

I am not sure if we will complete this sector in one go or two…….watch this space…… There are a couple of towns that we pass through on the way so they may make a ‘star entry’ in the next blog update!

Gotta go for now….tara!

(just incase you forgot, here is a reminder of our view!)