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16-21° C
We woke up at the river and by now I was so accustomed to the mumbling I did not even hear it anymore. Sleep was pleasant but I felt still tired. Benni realised his matress was slightly leaking so he had to reinflate once during the night. We had the usual breakfast and after repacking I got up the incline back to the road without a problem, the descent last evening felt probably difficult due to fatigue. The road pandered out to a tight single track with some rocky bits. The track spat us out onto a larger road and right away we came by all the commodities of a smaller town. We bought a new gas can and Benni lend a 32 mm wrench to tighten his chain (the last shop put it on too tight for the flimsy tool from the on board toolbox) while I chatted with the sales man who spoke a pretty thick norwegian accent but was also very amused by my German Swedish. In the local super market we filled up on knäckebröd, canned fish and butter – the new staple items for lunch it seemed. We grabbed the Norwegian spin on kanelbullar on our way out (nice but different).
From now on the the roads were easy and riding was pleasant. Going through woods with predictable and very curvy gravel roads. We made good progress and nothing super remarkable happened. We stopped for a phone call I had to make and suddenly we were back in Sweden. We had a break close to the entry point of the southern kungsleden and talked to and older couple from southern Germany about vehicle reliability and fly fishing. We had a coffee and decided not to stay at this shelter as it seemed rather populated. We found some other ones on the map that seemed to be close. We drove to another one, right next to a lake but also right next to some houses and directly on the street, pass. The next one was located somewhere in the middle of nowhere. We followed the trail ending in a turning bay. There was a tiny trail leading up to the right and I decided to give it a go. After some difficulties just 20 m in, we decided to walk it for a bit to check out what was about to come. We did not find a shelter anytime soon and the path was obviously intended for skidoos. Together we picked up the bike by it rear wheel and turned it on the spot. Downhill back to the turning bay was a lot easier. We made camp just in the turning bay and had some instant soup with parboiled rice of improvable quality. Benni went to bed early and I followed suit soon. The issues with the cooker and mattress needed some resolving and as it was supposed to rain tomorrow and the day after we decided to take some rest and resolve those problems. So far mosquitoes weren’t really a problem, only midges made life outside a bit annoying. This day, I also discovered the screw fixing the visor onto the left side of my helmet was lost. These screws are made from plastic and it broke, that it could easily be replaced with a metal screw. Bummer. Adding it to the list of things to fix.
