Swedish Lapland

A fantastic fishing trip to Swedish Lapland with our friends Andy (Footy) and John (Woody)!

After three flights which also entailed an argument in Manchester airport over 'explosives' (we were carrying self inflating life jackets in our luggage) and a bit of a hissy fit in Stockholm (Footy was a 'bit concerned' about missing a connecting flight), we arrived in Swedish Lapland. The land of the midnight sun, chewing tobacco, moose, no crime, mad driving antics and LOTS OF FISHING!

We had a fishing guide called David who also lent us a car and arranged some accommodation for us and generally showed us wonderful hospitality the way that only Swedish folk can. We stayed in a typically Swedish house which was basic but comfortable - NO TV FOR 2 WEEKS!!! how cool is that?

Each day David would take us to a lake or part of a river and suggest places to fish, he would organise boats for us to use and motors for the boats etc.

It is difficult to describe Swedish Lapland and really do it justice - there are LOTS of trees, so many lakes to fish, hardly any people and roads with no tarmac. Oh, I forgot to mention Beaver! I only said that for comedy purposes! There are beaver in the lakes and rivers and we found evidence of their existence but didn't manage to see one in real life.

This is a beaver dam!

We also saw moose regularly and a reindeer one day! There were lots of birds but the forests are so dense that you rarely see the song birds. There were some storks in the field outside the house and they were doing their 'dancing' ritual.

Anyway, we went there to catch fish and we did! We were after Pike and Perch mostly but also had a dabble with a fly rod and caught some beautiful brook trout. So here is a slide show of some fish we caught.

Sweden slideshow!

Some Skiing memories...

We had a great skiing holiday in March 2006. We went to a lovely small french resort called St Sorlin D'Arves. It's smaller than a lot of the other french resorts and so has more charm.

The snow and weather were exceptional in 2006. It was snowing as we arrived in Lyon and we couldn't believe that we had a private taxi transfer to ourselves to take us up to the resort. As we climbed up into the mountains the snow got heavier and heavier but our mad taxi driver just kept going, past queues of folk who had stopped on the mountain pass to put on their snow chains.

He had to abandon us half way up the actual resort though and the holiday rep took us in his van to our accommodation. We couldn't believe the snow the next day... what a fantastic ski holiday we had.

We even went snow shoe walking which was a fantastic experience, despite the guide speaking exclusively french!