Mossies, rain, beach and sun

Woke up in our little hut in Finland near Pello, made coffee and then dashed to the bike and got going as quickly as possible. The mossies are terrible in these parts and we both got savaged by our little friends despite using repellent.

The picture shows our hut. Note that it was a semi! We only had half the hut and this was the delux version. Camping is such fun!

We headed off knowing that the Arctic Circle crossing was about 30 miles from here and figured we'd get breakfast there. We did....and mercifully, the cafe seemed to be mossie free so we had some respite!

We bought stickers for the bikes (of course) including ones that promoted the mosquitos. I kid you not! Apparently it's a big joke in these parts that the tourists are food for the mossies!

The picture is at the Finnish Arctic Circle Centre  and it has a white line runing right through the car park. We parked up still just to the north for a last few minutes in the Arctic. My natty headgear is an attempt to avoid getting bitten whilst posing! Tricky! Anyway, we carried on and crossed the border from Finland to Sweden and headed across country hoping to find more interesting roads.

We stopped in Pitea for lunch and had a short walk around the town. We "lunched" in a nice restaurant enjoying "Pagan Feast" which ironically was Pasta Carbonara. Not sure the Italians would like being called pagans! It had rained hard for about two hours so we were pretty soggy and used the posh lunch stop as a chance to dry out.

We headed south on the E4 but it is pretty dull so we pulled off and went down to a seaside place and enjoyed icecream by the Baltic. The sun came out and all was good with the world. The pic below is Tim - post ice cream - enjoying the Baltic on a floating pier. I declined to enjoy due to sea sickness!!

It seemed a detour was called for so we left the main highway and hit out across country, to some extent following our noses. We fell lucky. Apart from it being a better road for biking, we rode past a little lake in the glorious sunshine with two stunning females in tiny bikinis standing at the side of the road.  (Sorry Sal - even a blind biker would have noticed them!) What they were doing, I have no idea but as we were well behind schedule, we pressed on. (Sorry Neil - didn't get a picture)

Aftter winding our way across country we found Umea and a decent hotel No mossies tonight. So far we have done 2995 miles from home and we still have a long way to go. Hope the tyres last!!!!