Reindeers – many, many reindeers

Day three (part I)

Today I got up early, no wonder after more than 10 hours sleep. I packed my things, cleaned the room and left Abisko heading westwards. It was still twilit and I was quite alone on the road.

That changed after 18 kilometres: A huge herd of reindeers blocked the road. I slowed down and slowly, slowly drove through the reindeers. Right after the reindeer crossing I found a parking place. Good to exit the car and take some images of these beautiful and gentle animals.

Reindeers crossingReindeers blocking the roadCars waitingMany, many reindeersReindeers digging after foodA reindeer starring at meNot all reindeers are shy

The reason why the reindeers were hanging around was probably the pile of big bags lying beside of the road. I guess they contain reindeer food.

After half an hour of taking pictures and watching I entered the car again and continued my journey to Norway.

Starting the journey

Day one and two

Round half past nine I started “Nordkalotten 2015”, my long journey through Northern Sweden, Norway and Finland. The first destination is Stokmarknes, which is 880 km away and according to Google Maps it takes eleven hours, nine minutes from my home in Skelleftehamn. I’m not a long distance driver therefore I divided the journey into three parts.

Day 1: Skelleftehamn – Solberget

When I started sky was completely cloudy and overcast but right after Vidsel the sky started to clear up and the temperatures dropped from -8 °C in Skelleftehamn to -21 °C in Solberget (with a daily minimum of -23 °C). On the journey I had to cross the river Luleälven three times and on one of the long bridges I could see the sun slowly going down.

Playground beside the E4Clearing up in VidselBlue sky between Vidsel and HaradsSunset above Luleälven

I’ve been in Solberget many times and I’ll be there again in February. This time I stayed only to sleep and continued the next day. I one woke up when Sesam, the tom cat and secret owner of Solberget lay down on my feet in the dead of night.

A beautiful room for the first night

Day 2: Solberget – Abisko

The evening before temperatures increased and it started snowing. When I woke up almost 10 cm fresh snow covered the ground and my car and it was only -2 °C. Half past nine I continued my journey heading for Gällivare, Kiruna and Abisko. It was cloudy the whole time but fortunately almost no snow fell. That made driving as easy as on the first day. Just some kilometres before Abisko sky cleared up a bit. I was lucky and could hire the same nice room where I already stayed last February for a week.

Continuing the trip“Civilisation”Snowy road to KirunaThe “fjäll” east from Absiko

Tomorrow I’ll enter Norway and continue to Stokmarknes.

Just testing the travel computer

I just have to test the computer I take with my on my journey before I leave tomorrow.

Copying images to Lightroom: CHECK
Finalising in Photoshop: CHECK
Uploading photos to the blog: CHECK

And here’s the test photo from today: The fence in my back garden.

The fence in the back garden today

I’m almost a bit sad to leave this fine place but the pleasant anticipation prevails.

Oh yes.

Publishing a blog article: CHECK

Postponement

Actually I planned to start my long journey ”Nordkalotten 2015” on this weekend, preferably on Saturday, but I have to change plans a bit. It’s not the car that leaked fuel to blame for it, it will be repaired tomorrow. It’s not the parcel that arrived in Germany too late and was resent to Sweden, it already came on Monday. It’s not the planning or the fact that I have to buy some minor items for the journey.

No, it’s a viral infection with fever that has caught me since Sunday. It seems to be much more tenacious than other colds I caught over the last years and I don’t know when I’m safe and sound again. I just have to wait, which is hard for me because I never have had much patience.

Of course I’ll let you know, when I’m able to plan again. Stay tuned.

Your mileage may vary

Another aspect of travel preparation: Getting a feeling for distances. I tried to get a feeling for distances by designing a map:

The distances in Northern Sweden, Norway and Finland.

I marked some larger towns on the map and used Google Maps to calculate the distances. Then I wrote the distance on the connecting lines. Are you wondering what the numbers mean? It’s miles! But neither statute miles nor nautical miles, it’s Swedish Miles or Norwegian Miles which nowadays are exactly 10 kilometres. There are commonly used in everyday language and no one would say “It’s 30 kilometres to Boliden”, when you could say “It’s three miles” instead.

But numbers are dangerous. The numbers on the map are just miles on the shortest way between point A and point B. Not more. There’re saying nothing about detours, weather conditions, photo breaks and the fact that you’re not allowed to drive faster than 60 on many Norwegian roads. And the map says nothing about all the small nice places – known and unknown – that I want to visit. And a lot of roads to these places are dead ends, you’ll have to drive back the same way doubling the mileage.

But numbers are interesting too. Take your magnifier glasses and seek for Inari. Found it? You see Kirkenes—Inari is 20 miles. OK, that’s not too bad. But have another look for Vardø. Vardø–Mehamn is 61 miles, more than 600 kilometres even if it’s just 14 miles as the crow flies. That’s because my car is neither able to fly or to swim and I have to follow the roads. And there are a lot of fjords in Norway forcing you into endless detours. Sometime you can already see your destination but have do drive two other hours to arrive. Sometimes that’s great, sometimes you just want to arrive at some chosen destination.

That’s why I added the red dots between Tromsø and Kirkenes. That’s the stops of the Hurtigruten, the famous Norwegian ships. If I’ll take the big tour even to Kirkenes – one of the things I will decide much later – I definitely will take the Hurtigruten to cut down the miles sometimes. And I’m looking forward to that too, it’s always nice to be on a ship.

Now I have only two days job left, then my free time starts: 108 days till Easter Monday. But I won’t start the journey before the 8th of January. That gives me some more weeks for additional planning …

Preparatory consuming

In round about five weeks I’ll start my long winter journey through Northern Scandinavia. There are three types of planning:

  • Which places do I want to visit on my journey?
  • What do I have to organise before the journey?
  • What do I need on the journey?

I’m still not sure mow much I should plan the route of my journey, and I’m right in the middle of organising, but part three seems to be almost done. That’s partly because I already have a lot of equipment (and in parts more than I need …) and partly because I ordered a lot of stuff the last weeks and many small and big parcels arrived here over the last weeks.

New equipment

And that’s some of the items I ordered the last weeks:

  • Top: Super warm expedition down pants from Marmot. Probably not the latest model but quite cheap and good for staying warm if it’s really cold.
  • Left: New rechargeable batteries for my GPS, for the big camera flash light and my headlamp. Most batteries I have are ten years old and I do not trust them anymore, especially if it’s cold.
  • Right: A heavy-duty green PVC smock (which is a pull-over jacket) to protect my other cloth against salt water, mud and sharp rocks.
  • Middle/right: A power inverter that transforms 12 Volt to 230 Volt so that I can charge batteries (and perhaps even my laptop) when driving.
  • Middle/left: An L-Bracket for my Nikon D800 camera that I can fix it on the tripod ball head in both portrait and landscape format.

And guess, what was the most expensive part? Believe it or not, it’s the L-Bracket which was more expensive than even the down pants!

What you see on the photo is just a part of my purchases: With the down pants I ordered the matching down parka, with the smock I ordered bib overalls of the same material.

The tripod got a new ball head and the tele lens a new foot matching the ball head. (My thanks to Jochen for the tips!)

For the car I bought snow chains, a 10 litre petrol canister and a jump starter, which is an external rechargeable battery that will provide enough power to start the car if the original battery is not working. (My thanks to Delle for the tips!)

The only things to buy that are left: A bigger waterproof bag for the camera and a roof box for the car. I know, I know, I could travel with much less equipment but since I have bought the car some years ago I love to take a lot of things with me. And know – back to planning.

Some vocabularies for my German readers:

down pants – Daunenhose
rechargeable – wiederaufladbar
power inverter – Wechselrichter
L-Bracket – L-Winkel
tripod – Stativ
bib overalls – Latzhose
ball head – Stativkopf/Kugelgelenkkopf
snow chains – Schneeketten

More planning

I never ever travelled for more than three weeks, two weeks in the winter. Now I’m planning for two month. And beside of which places I want to visit I have a lot of questions in my mind:

  • What do I need for the car in winter?
  • Will the petrol stove work?
  • How much water and food rations shall I have with me in case that I get stuck in the middle of nowhere?
  • How can I keep the laptop warm, when I leave the car for some days?
  • Which equipment do I have to buy that I don’t already have?
  • When will the Samyang 12mm f/2.8 ED AS NCS fisheye arrive in the shops and how much will it cost?
  • Do I need snow chains or are the spiked tyres sufficient?
  • Should I buy a bigger light than my normal headlamp?

And last but not least:

  • How will it be to travel for a long time in winter, partly alone? Just great or will I be longing home to my own bed and my grand piano?

Well, I’ll see.

“Nordkalotten 2015” – The plan

I know it’s not true. But sometimes I have the impression that I travelled more in Northern Scandinavia when I lived in Germany than now where it’s right on my doorstep. I know it’s not true but at times it feels like it would be.

This year in spring I got the idea of travelling around in winter for a longer time, two month perhaps or even three. When I just talked about this idea with my employer, I directly got the answer: Great idea! Do it! That’s why you moved to Sweden! Well – that was kind of easy! And gave me another reason why I love working for Hello Future!

Then summer came and the dreams of snow and winter melted away while we had one of the hottest summers for many a long year. But now it’s September, 24 hours daylight are past and today in the morning the thermometer showed only 1.5 °C. Time to start planning my winter tour which I call “Nordkalotten 2015”. Nordkalotten is the Swedish word for “Cap of the North”, which is the European region around and north of the Arctic Circle.

Map of “Cap of the North”

You see the red ribbon on the map? That’s more or less the Arctic Circle and a bit of the Finnish-Russian border. My plan is to travel north and west of the ribbon and I already have many ideas of places to visit, for example Abisko, Gällivare, Honningsvåg, Jokkmokk, Karesuando, Kautokeino, Kebnekaise, Kirkenes, Kiruna, Lofoten, Nikkaluokta, Rovaniemi, Senja, Sodankylä, Solberget, Tromsø, Vesterålen, Værøy …

Whoa, Olaf, take it easy! The Cap of the North is huge! How many thousand kilometres of winter roads do you want to drive? You won’t see all places in only ten weeks if you want to leave your car sometimes.

So true! Well, as a matter of fact I hardly have any plans at all at present. I want to visit some friends for sure. And then I’ll try to do at least one ski tour, hopefully not alone. The rest? I’m not sure yet.

This is where you get into the game: Do you have any ideas? Know secret places? Have other tipps? Or even a place to stay? You’re more than welcome to write a comment (or if you want to keep it private to drop me a line by email).

I’m looking forward to your ideas.