In the morning, Östen came by to say goodbye, and brought a couple of kilos of hjortron jam – homemade, of course. Flemming and I didn’t know yet, where we were going – the weather was quite unstable in the region. Östen recommended a couple of flying clubs where we could also get fuel, and even helped making calls (our phones were dead – our network providers didn’t bother establishing connection in such remote places).
In Gargnäs, the cloud base was very low. Flemming and I decided to move to our “internet cafe” in ICA, and monitor the weather from there. We thanked Östen for all his help, exchanged contact details, and walked down to ICA.
First – breakfast! ICA in Gargnäs had world’s best strawberry that day – it was simply the best strawberry I had in ages! Otherwise coffee with free refill, freshly baked bread, and we were fine.
In general, we were more interested in exploring remote places, closer to the border with Norway, and preferably in the mountain areas. But the weather was constantly bad there, and we had to adjust our plans. We had 1-2 weeks vacation left, and wanted to spend them somewhere on the sunny side. It looked like we could get to Sollefteå that day. Ulrik from the Sollefteå flying club assured us we’d be able to stay over in the club house, there was fuel, and in the afternoon, when the ceiling lifted a bit, we walked to the Gargnäs airfield.
Flemming attempted to say goodbye to the sheep, but they didn’t care much:
We took off, and did a couple of rounds over Gargnäs:
The camping site where we stayed, with cottages hidden behind the trees:
We also took pictures of the village and Östen’s house, and sent them later to Östen. The flight to Sollefteå was going to be easy – unless the weather would decide otherwise:
The big front was over, but there were some smaller ones on the way.
We managed to fly around them. The challenge in that wilderness was that in case of emergency you would only be able to land on a road – if there was one.
Flying in Sweden, we often spotted mines, especially in the northern part of the country, and were surprised how well-established the mining industry was. The one on the photo below was on our way that day; a Chinese-driven copper mine:
Closer to Sollefteå, the sun came out of the skies, and the approach was very beautiful:
We landed; Ulrik was waiting, and he directed us to the hangar.
Ulrik welcomed us to the Sollefteå flying club:
Showed the club’s hangars:
And we made ourselves comfortable in the club house. Flemming was so happy – there were issues of the Nordic Gliding magazine in every flying club we visited in Sweden, and he was often spending an evening reading them:
We slept on that couch in our sleeping bags, because we wanted to stay as close as possible to our aeroplane, and when a chance comes – fly further south, where the weather seemed to be better.
