Time to show Charlie the svenska fjallen!

After over 3 weeks of meeting friends and family, we thought that it is time for the two of us to head out for an adventure in the Swedish fells/mountains. We drove 5 hrs inland from my hometown to Åre, a small ski village located close to the Norwegian border.

The area is famous for its skiing (cross country and downhill) during winter and during summer it attracts trampers, downhill mountain bikers and mosquitoes (not too many at all this year, thank god).

During our first tramp we stumbled across one of Santa's reindeer. He wasn't too happy getting busted on his vacation from the xmas rush and he quickly escaped the paparazzi.Charlie thought it was very "Swedish" to clearly mark Skograns = Shoe Limit) where you have to take off your shoes to when entering the youth hostel where we stayed. It seem to be to hard to understand for his small English brain.

All tramping tracks are marked with this funny sign, which indicates that the Swedish style is to walk very fast.
After a 1,000+ climb, which 99% of visitors would skip by taking the gondola, we reached the top of Åre skutan. Lots of people were walking down the track we came up. We got some funny looks as we didn't fit into the mould of being "lagom", a Swedish world for being "just the right amount".

When Charlie saw the Swedish flag, he just had to raise the English flag and sing God Save the Queen.

We took a more interesting way down and had great views of all surrounding lakes.

We went mountain biking in the "Downhill Park", something completely new to me. I like downhill riding, but I don't mind going uphill too. As the summer was a pretty wet one, many of the tracks trough the forest were slimey muddy horrible things that I struggled to bike down. In Christchurch they close all the tracks as soon as a drop of rain hits the ground so I can't say I have had much practise. Charlie was enjoying it a lot more and felt like he was back to some of the wet slidey winter trails in Sheffield.
There were lots of people that seemed to ride a downhill bike for the first time. In general there are many Stockholm dudes coming up north for a bit of fun. They get a full on down hill bike, battle jackets, full faced helmets and then it is simply to ride down the hill like a flame. We saw some impressive falls on flat sections by some of the "cool" dudes who probably had never got any advice from the rental company regarding what not to do - e.g. slam on the brakes.

It made me feel better at least for a while...until I fell and scraped my chin a bit.

Here I was asking myself - Is this meant to be fun??? I preferred the rocky sections at the top of the mountain.

We also had a day to discover the fells away from the ski fields and the people. We had great weather when we walked to the top across all the board walks through the meres (bogs). We had some stunning light at the top. Looking at this landscape we felt very tempted to come back and do some cool ski touring in the area when we get the chance.
It was time to return to NZ again after 4 weeks of holiday. Sad but true. We already know when we will be back in Sweden next time...it will be for our wedding!