91.88km travelled in a time of 4hr59
Average 18.3kmph
Max speed 43.5kmph
Odometer 877.1km
Weather was wet and windy, hard work into the headwind and surprisingly wet despite the light misty rain it appeared to be when stationary. Terrain was a little more giving, with the more gentle Swedish landscape making our journey a little easier.
We set off from our little campsite at a reasonable hour, with a bit of cloud overhead but feeling positive about our 'short' day ahead. Still a little under the weather health-wise, we were making fairly good time when we stopped in for coffee at 'Stencafe' where we met the lovely Vivianne Englund, a fellow diner in her 70's who invited us to stay at her summer vacation house some 50km away!!! Not backwards about coming forwards, the racy Vivianne only wanted to know if we were looking for boys, and seemed nonplussed about the details of our journey, shared in broken English across the cafe.
Back on the road we really began to notice the drizzling rain -waterproofs were back out again and we were regretting our earlier decision in Kolari to remove the gaffa tape from our shoes, which were soon squelching with every turn of the pedal....We compounded our misery by deciding on a whim to ignore the cycle route signs for the more 'direct route' to Kalix which resulted in our last 10km into town following the E4 - the Swedish coastal motorway with a narrow tarmac shoulder and a lot of big, speeding vehicles.... Cold, wet and very hungry (well, Hazel, anyway), we managed to find our way into the city centre with the help of a very kind cyclist in the supermarket with only about an extra 10km added to our total for the day!!!
Luckily the rain had eased, and we set up our tents by a stretch of river (still no seaside coast in sight!) and headed straight for the sauna - thank you Sweden! Once the blood began moving into the fingers and toes again, we jumped into the showers and pulled out the cosmetics - ready to hit the town for some Saturday night partytime!!! Unfortunately, we seemed to have chosen the wrong town for after wandering the streets for some 20mins the only locales we could find open at 9:30pm were the 5 star hotel (which despite the makeup, we thought probably required a more appropriate attire than dresses, fleece and sneakers) and the supermarket!! Oh dear.... So supermarket it was, and after enjoying a delicious meal in the very well equipped kitchen (as self-appointed head chef and packer of sandwiches, there is no end to my appreciation for a well-stocked camp kitchen), we enjoyed a few games of cards before retiring to our tents, exhausted but looking good!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment