Geoff
We rejoined the E45 Inlandsvägen road to Mora. Here is the beginning of the Inlandsbanan rail journey, probably the most scenic in Sweden. Over two days, a two carriage diesel train leaves Mora once a day bound for Gällivare, a distance of 1,067km. It stops overnight at Östersund at the end of the first day. The journey is quite slow and the train stops frequently for food at a restaurant or from a stall on a platform, or where interesting wildlife is spotted. It is definitely for the tourists but a wonderful journey. We are not taking the train but our road broadly follows the railway line, often crossing it.
We stopped at a couple of places to see the train go by in different directions.
We are overnighting at a camperstop not far from the Inlandsbanan at a cluster of farm buildings occupied until 1910 by the descendants of Finnish settlers. They are now owned by the local council and managed by a heritage group. There is a shop and café which we shall investigate tomorrow.
There is an unmade road going by which goes for some miles. There are weekend cabins and holiday homes dotted about amongst the trees and on the edge of the nearby lake. Lining the road here and there are lupins, presumably self seeded. We have seen them elsewhere as well.
Most of our travel today has been along forested roads, absolutely lovely, but there will be more in the days to come. There are a lot of trees in Sweden.
Amanda
Weather
I haven't said anything about the weather yet, but it has been very pleasant. Today has alternated between showers and strong sunshine, hot when the sun is out and warm when it isn't. This evening it feels quite muggy and there is hardly any breeze. Perfect weather for biting insects☹️ I have enough bites already, thank you, despite all my precautions.
So back to the day's report. We started the day with a visit to one of our favourite Swedish haunts ;) a Biltema store, just outside Mora, a great place for useful gadgets. Geoff needed to replace the cheap trowel which broke under the strain of digging up worms for the fishing adventure! From then on we enjoyed tracking the Inlandsbanan train. The railway runs in Summer as a tourist attraction, and the road we are following , the Inlansvagan, weaves backwards and forwards across the railway line all the way from Mora to Gallivare. So it will be our close companion for 1000km. Trains run just once a day in each direction, so we were fortunate to catch one twice, first on the last leg of its journey to Mora, as it passed the lay-by where we had purposely stopped for lunch, and then on its way back north,about 13 kms further along the track, where it stops briefly on a bridge for a view of the Storsgtupet rapids through a gorge. Geoff frightened me to death by perching very close to the railway line in order to get a good photo, and matrimonial harmony was temporarily lost. He has now been forgiven.
Another hour of driving, and we are stopped for the night at a facility for 4 Campervans at Fagelsjo Gammelgard, a farmhouse Museum.
The Wild Guide to Scandinavia is proving extremely useful, as it has a section on the Inlandsbanan. The only problem is that, as its name suggests, it is full of suggestions for recommended spots for wild camping. Geoff, of course wants to check them all out. Since they can be found every 10 km or so, there is a tendency to slow progress. As he himself says, it's like a dog sniffing lampposts.
We have passed two places where bears are mentioned. We didn't stop there, although I suspect Geoff would have liked to get his tent out!
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