Bodo or bust!!

The beavy rain that had battered down all night was stopped by the time we had got up and it was a fine morning. I got myself a bit annoyed at us not having a plan, but after a wee debate we weighed up the pro's and cons of heading further north. The main pro is without a doubt meeting our friends from Bodo, Eirin and Dag who are keen to see us again also. It almost seems rude to have got this far up without making the final push to Bodo to give them a visit.

The cons are, it's still a long way north of where we are, 2 big days if you want to do it quickly. And of course 2 big days up means 2 big days down. The other con is that we will not see as much of the central areas of Norway that we would like to visit.

My thinking at the moment is that we will need 2 days to get back down from Bodo to Trondheim, and another 2 days to get down from Trondheim to Oslo or Larvik. And for those 4 days of driving we will actually have 7 days to do it in, so we can afford the time and we will get to a few places we want to visit on the way back down. 

We used the golf club facilities and got on the road none too early, but the weather was lovely and the road was again almost dead once we had cleared Ostersund. There were some big trucks, quite a few motorhomes but hardly any cars, compared to what we are used to in Scotland this is pure driving heaven. There was one section today where we were on a perfectly straight bit of road for nearly 5 miles, incredible. 

Mo I Rana is a place which would put us quite close to Dag and Eirins....but it was too far to expext to drive today with our late departure, so we looked at possibilities on the way there.   Tarnaby seems like a good target....Otursund to Tarnaby was a distance of 423km..which equates to 262 miles....I love working in KM's...the numbers are big but they come down much quicker than miles. I generally don't put the final days destination into the sat nav...better breaking it into wee chunks for the boys as they moan when they see a huge number....better to just add on another 100km at the end of the day, lol. 

The E45 helped us again to eat up the miles as far as Storuman, where we turned left onto the E12. We had passed a few nice looking parking up places and also campsites which are now noted on the map. Storuman was a nice looking place, quite a big town on the edge of yet another big lake at about 450m above sea level, until now Sweden had been very level but this was now about to start changing. We got supplies, diesel, food and of course beer which is cheaper this side of the border. I have been drinking Norrlands Guld which is a Swedish Lager and its very nice. 

The road to Tarnaby was beautiful, very like some of the central Highlands of Scotland. Lots of trees, Lakes rather than lochs and some nice looking hills, very like driving from Laggan to Spean Bridge only for a much longer distance. Again the road was nice and wide and also very quiet. We arrived at the campsite in Tarnaby and got checked in. We arrived at about 7pm and immediately upon stepping out the van to get checked in ended up chatting to a Finnish man and lady who had given our right hand drive vehicle a good old stare. We chatted for a while, his English was perfect, he told us about Tarnaby and also quizzed me as to what it was like driving on the wrong side of the road, round roundabout the wrong way, lol. Finally we got checked in, again the lady spoke perfect English. She explained the campsite and we found a pitch and got hooked up. The boys were immediately away to play on the swing park as they had been in their seats for a while today.

This is a stunning area, a huge river ran right beside the campsite, almost everyone in the campsite had a fishing rod. This big river runs down through all the lakes and eventually drains into the Gulf of Bothnia at Umea a long way to the south east. After dinner we got our shoes on and went for a walk up the side of the river, there were loads of fishers in the water and they were all catching fish, wild trout, Arctic char, they are all in here. No salmon however as the hydro schemes along the river prevent them from getting up here. 

We chatted to a young Swedish family, they had moved to the area from Umea as he was a snowboarder and fisher and had wanted to be closer to the things he loved. He was also working as a warden on the river, checking to see anglers were using the correct fishing methods, fly and spinners were good but no worms. We chatted for ages about loads of things like ice hole fishing in the lakes...sounds brilliant  and the mountains around here, so much for an outdoor lover to do. His little 1 year old son Jack was amused for a while by Callum and Logan, he js a lucky lottle boy who is going to grow up in a stunning location and do lots of great things woth his mum and dad. He suggested tonight would be a good fishing night as they expected a hatch of Cadis flys, I could go online and get a permit and I was seriously tempted. But sleep was needed and I didn't bother. I wanted to get up early and do a bit exploration before we moved on west. We crossed the long wooden suspension bridge over the river, checked out a few more wee corners before heading back to the van and bed, it was broad daylight still, it does not get dark up here.