Arrival at the southern most Latitude

We arrived today at the Arctic circle line in JokkMokk.

To get here we have done a straight drive from Gothenburg to JokkMokk, swapping around drivers between myself and Thor and having 20 minute stops here and there. Now to spell this out for you that is a minimum of 16 hours 24 minutes of driving and 866 miles; but we did take detours which equated to over 1000 miles. The driving conditions were treacherous in the pitch black Swedish winter; with fully iced roads nearly all the way with rain, snow and grit mounting on the windscreen it was the hardest drive, in concentration terms, I have ever attempted.

But due to plan changes myself, Russell and Steve will not be driving back and will be boarding a train from Murjek (35 miles from where we are currently) and traveling to Copenhagen via Stockholm with a round trip time of around 22 hours. We have got a cabin for two days up in the Arctic circle and we leave on our railway adventure Thursday evening. I will have covered quite some ground in a few days.

On the way we stopped many places including Ostersund  – at which Swedish ‘lads’ decided to jump in a banged out old car throw a blue smoke bomb on the ground and do doughnuts in the shopping complex car park. I couldn’t blame then however as there is literally nothing to do in this area of Sweden, with nearly every shop closed.

The snow gathered as the miles slowly closed down; 200, 150, 100. By the time we were almost at our destination snow and ice covered everything – rivers and lakes were now drivable and the wind chill bitter.

We then reached our destination, had a beer and asked Steven if he would jump down a 50 foot snow drift. He of course obliged – Video to follow later.

More in depth posts to follow tomorrow. Right now I’m knackered after last waking up at 8am Monday Morning.

Some of the few pictures below of our scenery:

Currently the temperature is -2 degrees C. The weather has been very mild for the last two days owing to a storm. It is estimated to be around -12 degrees C tomorrow.