Sollefteå flying club has its home in a picturesque location in a forest by the river Faxälven. The night was so light we couldn’t sleep much, and got up early.
When Ulrik arrived, he took us on a tour to the old tower. There were ancient instruments and many interesting things:
I washed our aircraft, and we made it ready for a flight:
Ulrik offered us a sightseeing trip to Sollefteå town, and we gladly jumped into his car. It was about 20 km away, and we would otherwise never got there on foot. Very few airfields in Sweden have bicycles for rent, and the distances to the nearby cities or sites are normally long anyway.
Sollefteå is an old town. The first written account of it was found in a script dated back to 1270.
The historic building on the photo below was a pharmacy in 1889. Today, it is a library (we’ve seen lots of them in Sweden), and a city museum. The house was designed by Swedish architect Niclas Wahrgren.
The oldest hotel in Sollefteå is Appelbergs. It was built in 1882 by timberman and innkeeper Erik Appelberg:
The hotel became a centre for timber merchants. Notable guests include Crown Princess Stéphanie of Austria, King Oscar II and Gustav V of Sweden, and Kaiser Wilhelm II. The hotel also provided accommodation for King Chulalongkorn of Siam and four of his princesses during their tour of Ångermanland in the early 20th century!
The main street of Sollefteå:
We reached to Ulrik’s car just in time, before the heavy rainfall hit! But it was short, and there were many of them during the day. Ulrik drove us to Faxälven where we could experience a nice walking bridge:
And to see the river from a different angle:
Memory from the bridge:
Ulrik spent whole day with Flemming and me, which we were so grateful for. In the evening, when the weather stabilised a bit, we headed for our next destination.
We were going to Siljansnäs, a famous airpark in Sweden:
Siljansnäs, an isthmus on Lake Siljan, is a gorgeous area on the western side of the lake. And Siljan is the 6th largest lake in Sweden. The lake is located around the southwestern perimeter of the Siljan Ring, a circular geological formation which was created 377 million years ago by a major meteorite impact. The original crater, now mostly eroded, is estimated to have been about 52 km in diameter and is one of the largest known impact craters in Europe. Flemming is interested in geology, and he wanted very much to see Siljan from above. All the way to Siljan he was telling me stories about that meteorite, how it impacted the area, what happened, and so on.
His interesting stories were interrupted many times, by a phenomenon we haven’t seen before – horizontal rainbows. There were rain showers from time to time, and in between there were so many beautiful rainbows, hundreds of them! We took lots of pictures, but only one was good enough to publish her (and it doesn’t illustrate our real experience):
The optical illusion was that these rainbows were very low above the surface, and that they were horizontal. It was so weird!
In Siljan, the weather was nice. We were asked to be in holding (for way too long time) in order to give landing priority to a sea plane.
One of the pilots in that sea plane was a Dane, and after we landed, and said hello to each other, he kindly asked us whether we had dinner, had food with us, needed a car or any other help. Flemming and I were going to stay in a club’s hut at the airfield. At the club’s house, some people were having dinner. We were invited, but would rather have a quiet evening, and relax.
We brought a bottle of rosé with us (bought in Sollefteå):
The dinner was simple, and we enjoyed it:
We were the only guests in Siljansnäs flying club.
In the late evening, when all others left, it was warm, sunny, and silent…