Tour de Scandinavia 2022
Tour de Scandinavia 2022
Welcome to the second part of the Drone Roadshow, this time from Scandinavia.
We took a road trip through Sweden, continued to the beautiful Norwegian Lofoten Islands, and returned home via Finland and the Baltic States.
A bird’s eye view of Northern Europe – here we go!
Probably because of the positive impression left by the previous Alpine edition, my participation was not refused on this road trip, the aim of which was to see the world of Scandinavia from a bird’s-eye view. Specifically, to fly over Norway’s Lofoten Islands, stopping here and there along the way.
In 2019, I was fortunate enough to take a similar trip in the winter to see the Northern Lights. Maybe that’s why I was appointed as chief navigator, and perhaps also because there was no one else in the vehicle except the driver. The driver was told that for the next 6,500 km or so, he’d have to deal with a lot of stress from the right side. Maybe if I’d shared this in Prague it would have gone differently, but I kept it to a boring stretch of German motorway where it was impossible to stop, so he accepted it as fact.
So, how did it go?
See for yourself…
Tour de Scandinavia 2022 in pictures
The timing of the tour couldn’t have been better. As luck would have it, we found ourselves in Sweden just in time for their Midsummer celebrations, which mark the longest day of the year. As you go further north in Scandinavia, there’s less daylight. In short, Midsummer is like a combination of witch burning (the Czech celebration) and New Year’s Eve (just ignore the fireworks), so we found ourselves, quite by chance, in the midst of a pan-Scandinavian celebration. We thought it was a shame not to get involved in local traditions, so we took on the role of guests across Sweden with honour (if I remember correctly – lots of beers during the festivities). Why across? We started preparing for Midsummer in Gothenburg. Then we couldn’t turn down an invitation to visit our chauffeur friends in the town of Oskarshamn on the north-eastern side of Sweden. And on the way north I couldn’t miss a visit to a good friend in Uppsala. Midsummer was very intense!
We were pretty surprised in Norway by a true polar day and also by some kind of meteorological anomaly that caused the daytime temperature to be over 33°C and the night after midnight, when the sun is high above the horizon, to be a very unpleasant 27°C. It was tricky to keep the beer warm in these conditions, so we went for a ‘hurry up, don’t let it get warm’ approach instead. Also, we treated the boots with beeswax, but it ended up all over the car, not just on/in the boots. This wasn’t a unique occurrence in Norway – it was pretty much the same across the EU.
OnePlus 8 Pro / 26 June 2022 23:37 / outdoor temperature 24° C / FURU Hostel
On our way back, we took the route via Finland, where we managed to sort out the beeping infotainment issue just before we reached Helsinki. The driver decided to use his phone with the Waze navigation app, which was placed between the steering wheel and the alarm clocks, instead of relying on his usual navigation skills due to the harsh penalties for speeding in Scandinavia, particularly in Finland. So, we didn’t notice the repeated warnings about the low water level in the expansion tank until it started to affect the car’s performance. It also made a new, previously unheard of sound and displayed a new warning message: “critical engine temperature”. Instead of going to Helsinki, we cooled the car at a gas station. I cooled myself in my own way – with beer. Everything went well. I crossed the bay on a boat to Estonia, where I had a great time (I even had a chance to relax in the capital, Tallinn). From there, we made our way through the rest of the Baltics and Poland back home with just a few stops along the way.
Tour de Scandinavia in numbers
Drove
Droned
Photos taken
Recorded videos
Pics size
New beers