the long drive!

we arrived last night in Tronheim and stayed in a lovely wee log cabin at Vikhamar Camping. It was very cosy!! we made some lovely tinned spag bol for dinner, nutritious!

oh, and we all got to make use of our sleeping bags, and the bedrooms were bunk beds. once in the top bunk it seems to be very high to get down from!!!

It was a very early start this morning! we were up at 6.30am and were away from the cabin at about 7.30am. it was pretty cold!!!

The journey was long but some seriously beautiful scenery was to be taken in! Norway is honestly a breathtaking country.

Maria, our sat nav, took us way off the motorway today and we headed in land from some REAL rally driving!!!! one of the roads was just a dirt track that was covered in ice and covered over again in mud!!! There were such big dips & humps to go over that megs & ellis in the back came off their seat!!!! was very very funny!

We took a break when we were away up the mountains. The roads were totally cleared but there was soooo much snow we had to get our ski gear on and get in there!

there are some videos of us sliding down the hills & pictures of the gorgeous scenery. These will be uploaded soon (the files are too big to upload just now so the pics need re-sizing).

Lots of cross country driving today! through little villages and past some massive lakes that were completely frozen over!!!!

For lunch we decided to have a BBQ by a frozen lake. We found and area that was sign posted for a swimming area (clearly used in the summer) so we decided to go there and get the coals lit! we had bought some hot dogs last night at the supermarket so it was BBQ's hot dogs on nice granary bread for lunch!

The lakes are amazing! seeing how they are used for cars & snow mobiles crossing rather than people using the roads is interesting. But Ellis though he would be smart and go walking out there! close to the edge he stood on some thin ice and it started cracking ..........

YES HE WENT THROUGH THE ICE! it was only ankle deep but i can imagine that it was unbelievably cold!!!

Malcolm did almost all the driving today (he has driven every day since we arrived), but let ellis take over with about 2 hours to our destination so that Bar Mercedes could be opened in the back seat.

Arrived in Lulea before it got dark which was nice. Booked into a lovely hotel called, Elite Stadshotellet. Its just on the outskirts of town and the rooms are really lovely!!! Ellis & Meghan have ended up with a suite!!! they have a living room area in their room!!!!

Decided that for the first time we would go and have a proper dinner tonight. We have been living off of Meghan's sandwich shop, crisps, confectionery & coca cola!!! healthy!!!

So we took a walk down the high st but in Sweden everyone must eat early or something because the kitchens were closed in any of the restaurants we tried! so we went to the trusty MAXX BURGER!

We discovered Maxx Burger in Stockholm last year and for a fast food joint its pretty tasty!

Meghan was sooooo looking forward to a Maxx Burger, Ellis too! they have a view of Maxx Burger at the lake from their hotel rooom!!

We have now transported some of Bar Mercedes up to the suite and are planning tomorrow's trip!!!

looks like another 11 hour drive tomorrow so i think we need to be leaving pretty sharp! BUT this hotel includes breakfast so i think we are going to stuff ourselves before setting off!!!

Helsinki is where we will meet up with the rest of they rally-ers hopefully! we have been about 3 days behind so been trying to get to a point where we see them before its over!!!

At the moment we have done about 3000 miles!!!!! eek!! The car is fantastic, almost to the point that we will be sad to see it go when we get to Tallinn!!!