Polar Challenge Blog

Last night’s camp site at Skelleftea (Sweden) was one of the quietest and indeed nicest camp sites we have been to so far though whilst eating breakfast I clonked my head on the corner of the open tail gate. It isn’t the first time though this time whilst leaning forward to eat my boiled egg, blood starting to drip on the plate. I then discovered my head was leaking. Geoff rushed out with a first aid kit though all that was needed was lots of tissue paper to soak it up. I don’t think any brains oozed out.

Refueling at the garage next to the camp site we hit the road again and started knocking back the miles. Now we are solo, our cruising speed has jumped from 45 – 50mph to 60 – 65mph (70mph on the motorway) so we are flying along now.

As we headed through Sweden towards Norway the roads started to get worse again with huge pot holes and strange dips that would throw the Reliant in all directions, then came the torrential rain as well and at one point we managed to take a corner aqua planing sideways as there was so much water on the roads.

I think from bashing my head this morning and having to concentrate on driving so much with such appauling conditions led to one King sized headache and Geoff is also a wounded soldier after a flying beastie attacked him last night so he now has a lump on his head and hand.

At about 7:30am we were back in Norway having driven 520 miles today so we decided to call it a day and get to a camp site. Things were helped by entering a different time zone so we gained an hour extra. Geoff looked on the laptop to find the nearest camp site and we headed towards that though got slightly lost. Asking a local, he said it was to awkward to explain how to get there so he said, “Follow me” and jumped into his Volvo and led us there. It was about another mile further down the road.

Compared with last night’s camp site this one is a bit different as it looks like an old field converted, still has nice hot water though so no complaints. As they had no shop, Geoff went off to the shop whilst I put up the tent. He then came back with a large tin of something that looked suspiciously like Irish Stew though seemed to contain bits of Reindeer.

The Reliant (New Blue) is still creating great interest where ever we go and people are just literally stopping and stairing at it. We clocked up our 4,000th mile today since starting this journey and New Blue is still going strong. We wondered if the brake shoes were wearing a little thin today as at one point we braked and there was a strange griding sound. Upon inspection everything seems OK and the sound has now gone so we wondered if somehow a stone got in there.

Elvis

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 08:54 pm and is filed under The Journey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.