It has taken two days to get here but the effort was worth it:  Newcastle to Manchester to Stockholm to Kiruna, to Tärendö. Into the Arctic Circle again, we came in the winter for the darkness and the aurora and now we are back for the midnight sun, a chance to see some of the places in daylight that we only glimpsed in snow and the too short days of winter.

This feels like escape – endless forests, lakes and empty roads which for miles and miles are unmade, not because they are out-in-the-wild tracks but because the Swedes have a novel approach to resurfacing – dig everything up, start again but don’t close the ‘roads’.

These are a few images from our brief stay in this beautiful place, fittingly at the Forest Hotel.  All of them taken in haste – stand still for more than a few seconds and both the camera and photographer are covered in midges 👿

Tomorrow we drive east into Finland.