Day 16 – at Mörkret

Bogged down with good coffee and a weird Quebec horror novel I was slow to get going this morning. But the sun was out, and it was very agreeable to sit reading in a temperature of late teens.

Eventually that coffee stirred me into action, the cloud had gathered, and the cooler temperature made for good conditions for a walk in the National Park. There’s a footpath just outside the village that winds it’s way through the forest a couple of hundred metres or so parallel to the road that climbs up to the Park Headquarters, where I was parked yesterday for the waterfalls. The path is hardly used, and so quite hard work in thick undergrowth and boggy ground, no boardwalks on this track lesser taken. I returned on an easier cross country ski trail.

There haven’t been many days I’ve stayed put so far on this course. But today was one. Distances are massive here of course, I’ve covered almost 2,000 miles so far, and have probably 1,500 to go to the far north coast. There’s no hurry though, I will hopefully pick up my visa near Luleå in a week, or could be two, or even three. That will give the nights in the Arctic a chance to cool down, and the mosquitos to become a rarity, unlike at the moment. It needs, apparently, three nights in a row below 4C.

So, a quiet afternoon investigating online mapping, and various other bits of business.