For my first day (09/10/2019) driving north from Stockholm, I
wanted to make a dent into my Northern trek (wanting to spend most of my time north of the Arctic Circle) and so ended a full 5° north from
my departure point. This also means that most of the waken hours of that day
were spent behind the wheel. The rest of the segments I wanted shorter to have time for hiking and "touristing" even on driving days.
Vilhelmina (64.6245° N, 16.6555° E) is an old Sámi center of
southern Sápmi aka Lapland. I walked into Hotel Vilhelmina and got lucky, not
only did they have a room, it had a great view of “Volgsjön” - Volgus Lake known
for gigantic trout.
To gain those 5.3 degrees of latitude north I covered some
700 Km. Each degree of latitude north (or south) represents about 111 Km of
travel. The range varies because of the earth's slightly ellipsoid shape (“flattened”
at the Poles) but the variation is very minor. Had I had a road going straight north
and had Vilhelmina not been a degree and a half or so of longitude to the East relative
to Stockholm, the distance to cover the 5.3° would have been just about 590 Km,
so my “detour penalty” was about 110 Km (or another degree). For the rest of the trip, I will have
less of “detour penalty” as I will be on the inland route and so vary very
little either East or West and pretty much drive straight North.
For the route, I followed the coast of the Baltic Sea aka the Gulf of Bothnia
from Stockholm to Sundsvall (62.3908° N, 17.3069° E) and there went North-East
towards Östersund (63.1767° N, 14.6361° E). The first six hours of that drive
was under non-stop rain that finally let up a bit after Östersund.
This day I still consider approach because before passing
the Arctic Circle I don’t fully “feel” Lapland just yet. That is also why I was
willing to spend all that time behind the wheel.
Here are a couple of pictures (click to enlarge):
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| The route north then north-east- then north covering 5.3 degrees of Lat. N. |
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| Volgsjön, a lake known for enormous trout. |
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| An island in the lake. |
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| Hotel Vilhelmina - A great little hotel. The top floor is the dining room with panoramic views of the lake. |
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