It's funny how you give up on an idea sometimes, or shrug off a thought, just not expecting it to happen. The Northern lights were such an example, just one of a few surprises this past few days. Santa, reindeer and Norway were the others!
I'm now in Obisko, a national park in Lapland, as far north as you can go in Sweden, and over a hundred miles within the Arctic Circle! Despite this, there's only snow on the mountain tops and it's been up to 13ºC in the daytime. That said in the shadows and at night it can get pretty cold. Autumn comes early here, and the leaves have already started changing colour which only makes the area even more beautiful than it already is.
I arrived on Thursday on a sleeper train from down south - a 16.5 hr journey, which wasn't nearly as bad as it sounds. With half the day gone I looked in the visitors centre, then on a whim did a 5 mile walk up and back to some waterfalls. Having nothing with me I ended up drinking head-first out of the river - its pure enough!
Being off-season, there's only been one other person in the hostel each night. The first was a slightly mysterious old guy with a big grey beard. Being in Lapland, it's obvious who this was on his holidays... He called himself Markku, (obviously to avoid detection) and was from Finland, riding his motorbike around Scandinavia. To top off my theory, as he left he said 'I have my beard, you have your hair' and gave me a new comb as a present. Ha! Suprise #1. There was a German guy the next night, who had been hiking with a mate who's spending 3 months walking up through Scandinavia, mad! And last night a Swiss guy - where's the girls?!
The next day I went on a 15 mile hike, my longest ever. I'm not big into hiking normally - too slow paced compared to biking, but couldn't miss this. I went up between the mountains to a lake, crossing all sorts of terrain. It was that remote that I only passed other walkers in the last couple of miles. The best bit was encountering many reindeer, high up in the hills. Must have seen about 10 groups of them, all quite nervous and easily spooked. They're all owned by local native people, and were migrating back down the the valleys for winter. Suprise #2.
I understood I was too early in the season to see the Northern Lights, but the hostel owner told me otherwise, so despite being knackered I stayed up late hoping to see them. I went up away from streetlights to a helipad and waited, and just as I got too cold and gave up, I started seeing a bit of green in the sky. Didn't amount to much so ended up going to bed. At 1am, just before I did though, I took one last look out the window, only to see the skies starting to light up so rushed outside, yes! It was amazing, truly amazing. Hard to describe, but a bit like fireworks that don't fall, that can glimmer, grow, and move around. A memory for life and surprise #3.
Saturday started off with some planning, trying to work out whether to travel a bit of Norway as I was so close. In the end I decided it was too expensive on a backpacking trip, so decided to cycle to Norway and back for the day to the town of Narvik. The scenery through Sweden was nice, but the moment I crossed the border it got even better. Each corner I turned opened up a new vista, all of which were just stunning- snow capped mountains, lakes and painted holiday huts. But what with setting off too late at midday, and with 108 miles round trip to cycle, I didn't have long to stay there. They were the first proper hills I'd ridden since England, and consequently I'm aching all over today! Never planned to go to Norway, so suprise #4!
