Yesterday, on the sixth day of our trip, we set off from the untouched wilderness of Finnish Lapland, continuing westward into the charming Norwegian landscapes.
Day 6 was a long and winding road, with many highlights, and our EV handled it well.
Car charge and usage data
We are now well into the slowest part of the journey, with maximum speeds outside of towns of around 60 to 90 km/h.
We made one charging stop: in Finland, along its western border, on one side of its river frontier with Sweden. This had a small number of fast EV chargers and was all we needed across the entire day. We did some AC charging at our hotel overnight (Day 5 into Day 6) so we had a good state of charge to use initially.
We managed 4.1 miles per kWh on this leg of the journey. Great news for efficiency and unsurprising considering the slow speeds involved.
Story of the day
When we woke up, we decided to go straight down to breakfast from our lovely accommodation in Finnish Lapland. Breakfast was a lot busier than at our late dinner the night before. We had many delicious things and even tried the waffle maker which may have overflowed just slightly. We also saw some reindeer outside the window from our breakfast table. Just going about their daily business, not particularly bothered about anything going on around them. This was wonderful to watch and everyone in the restaurant was looking over at them.
After a quick trip to the gift shop, we were on our way.
We drove for quite a while, along the river where the Finnish – Swedish border is. It was extremely cool seeing mountains from another country just across a small bit of water – and also looking at somewhere where the time is different. We are from the UK, where across the whole group of islands it is the same time, so this is a bit of a novelty.
There were also so many trees along the edge of the road. There was one lane per direction of traffic for the first part of the journey. But then we ended up on winding country lanes though the mountains that only had one lane and plenty of passing places. One of the other highlights of the long drive was seeing many more deer including big families of them. The kept walking into the road so we had to be extra careful. We managed to film some fairly good footage of them.
Then, for our first and only charge of the day, we found a group of only four Tesla Superchargers outside of a roadside petrol station. We got lunch here which consisted of a hamburger and some really well seasoned crinkle cut chips. And, despite the burger having a slightly different taste (we did order the standard hamburger), it was an overall good lunch. While the car still had time left on it to charge, we went into the shop at the petrol station and got some Finnish caramel chocolate. It also had nougat in and was really tasty.
Afterwards, we drove again. For another few hours. Something that was really annoying about this drive was that we were going somewhere and the navigation made a prediction as to how long it would take to get there. It ended up being around twenty minutes off and we almost missed our boat trip. The reason for the delay was a really long series of small roadworks followed by a long stretch of single lane traffic around some roadworks. If our group of vehicles hadn’t been about 30 seconds from taking its turn to snake along the winding, dug up road, we would have missed the boat – literally.
The boat trip out to the nature reserve where Finland, Sweden and Norway was great. We were in a small boat, sat at the back. The view out of the window was absolutely incredible, with loads of mountains and trees. We also got a full on geography and history lesson on the boat. The person talked about where each country border was and exactly how to get there through the nature reserves. She also told us about a painting that was done by sailors a long time ago of the mountains. The painting looked very blurry so all we could really make out were shapes.
Eventually, we got to the harbour which was actually in Sweden though our clocks didn’t change for quite some time. We first looked at the map but then just decided to go for it and take the risk. The lady on the boat said to keep the reindeer fence on the left and the water on the right as we walked – and we did just that. It was a three kilometre trek to the border but after winding and rocky paths, we managed to find it. The three country cairn marking the border marking was a yellow concrete marker with a three-sided grey stone on top of it, siting atop the waterway and marking the point at which the three countries are joined. The highest point in Finland is nearby, as are some wonderful Norwegian mountains. Each side of the grey stone was a different country. We ended up with lots of videos and pictures between us.
We then had to do the entire walk again but back the other way. There was also a point where we thought we had gone the wrong way though it turned out we hadn’t. The tour guide lady told us a story about a woman who had gotten locked into the toilet, which was rather peculiar but also funny to hear about. We then got back on the boat, sat in the same seats and left.
Then came another drive but this time, it was straight to our hotel. It was only a few minutes after we got moving that we crossed the border into Norway – although we had done that on foot about 90 minutes beforehand for a few seconds – and then we were heading along even more mountain roads. The road winds its way around the landscape. The road is mainly built along the shoreline but sometimes it’s not possible for the road to follow that path so a 3km or 4km perfectly straight tunnel takes you through a mountain to continue your journey. On one part of the journey there was a road which goes all the way along one side of a large expanse of water and back along the other side; a bridge across here would probably not be possible but it really adds to the experience to follow the line of the land.
When we eventually got to the hotel, we parked outside the little cottage by the fjord. Then we saw the view from the window. We saw the snow-capped mountains across the water and the sun was still shining brightly at 6:15 in the evening.
At around 7:00 pm, we decided that we needed to go out and get dinner. But the hotel restaurant didn’t open for another few weeks – a bit too long to wait. So we just chose to head into town. But the nearest town was a half an hour drive away from where we staying. This is the far north of Scandinavia. This is the Arctic. Dinner consisted of meatballs and nachos, with crème brûlée for our dessert. It was all very delicious, especially the dessert. We then had a quick stop at the shop to buy breakfast for the next day and some more supplies too.
