Country: Norway, Sweden
Distance travelled:
Weather: Rain clearing in the evening

Today was all business. Since we need to travel some seven hundred kilometers to get to Bodø and from there the Lofotan Islands, we decided to head to Sweden, fill up with their relatively cheap fuel, buy as much food as we can manage to store and drive North until we have to turn West again. Hopefully we will also manage to top up the diesel again before we cross back into Norway. And even if the comparative economics are close, we have a few thousand Swedish Kroner we would have to get exchanged somehow, so we may as well spend them.

The drive to the Swedish border was uneventful, apart from a tourist information sign informing us that the Kommune we were currently in had bears and lynx as well as the usual deer. We stopped for lunch just over the border in a dirt pull-over just before the road crossed a bridge over quite a deep canyon and went for a short walk to try to get a photo of the waterfall there. Apart from that it was trees, trees, trees. Occasionally to break the monotony there was a lake, surrounded by trees.

Swedish Waterfall

Eventually we reached the Lidl in Östersund and embarked on a shopping spree of everything we could possibly see a use for and find a space to store. Drinking water, which is surprisingly expensive in Norway (unless we are looking at the wrong stuff), tortilla wraps, tinned tuna, milk, cheese, another two packets of Swedish meatballs. We even splashed out on a very nice looking fillet of pork and of all things to find this far north a packet of yakitori marinade. I can’t wait until that’s on the menu. The pork is vac-packed, so it should keep for a while in the fridge.

From Östersund, the road took us north, with our eyes peeled for a place to empty our two almost full toilet cassettes. Trees, trees, farm houses, trees, trees, about five kilometers of roadworks where they had replaced the bitumen with extremely rough gravel and everyone slowed to a crawl, trees, lake!, trees, trees, trees, oh my god when did the bitumen turn to a red colour? Trees, trees, Welcommen til Lappland, trees, trees, lake, trees.

About 9pm we passed the first Swedish rastplats we had come across. This was a very nice little spot being cared for by the local community with a donation box if you appreciated their efforts. Unfortunately there was no place for the distasteful chore we had to do so we travelled on. It was just approaching 10pm when we pulled into a more professionally setup rastplats with six or seven motorhomes parked up on the bitumen. There was picnic tables, fire pits and bins and public toilets and, lo and behold, a ‘latrin’, a specific setup to empty chemical toilet cassettes.

Rastplatz - Sweden

It was Marks’ turn to cook, so while he whipped up two of his wonderful omlettes, I went about sorting out our other problem. The latrin, like a small toilet cubicle with a large flushing sink and a hose for rinsing made this generally unpleasant chore, while not a pleasure, definitely a lot less unpleasant than it could have been. It even had heating which was lucky because the temperature was dropping quite rapidly. The worst was soon over and we were sitting down, snug in the van, to our delicious dinner.