Day 3: Gävle – Vilhelmina

On March 15, 2018April 8, 2018 By drcoreaLeave a comment

Monday, February 26th, 2018
Distance covered: 515km
Driving: 12pm – 7pm
Weather: Cloudy morning, sunny afternoon
Lowest temperature: -14C
Border crossing: none

Got up early to be at the Volkswagen garage at 07:30am to have them check the “strange sound”. The flexibility of Volkswagen was great, and they took a look at our rallye vehicle right away. After a short test drive, they took the car on the hydraulic ramp and we saw a lot of Swedish mechanics with torches under the car, discussing and doing stuff over the next hours.

While waiting and waiting, we saw the other teams heading north … But coffee was good and after a while we got an update on the problem. They needed to change the oil in the differential. Another test drive was promising, and the last remaining thing to do, was swapping our high-end winter tires to spikes tires. Around 12:00 this was done and we even got the changing of the tires for free and finally headed north.

5 minutes later, on the way to the gas station, the sound was back. We were shocked. Silence. Frustration. Considering the expected 4.000€ for a new differential as well as the time it might take to get it done. But after leaving the gas station, the sound was gone, and still is, but …

… it was back after 205km and joined us all the way up to Vilhelmina. We left the coast in Sundsvall with its massive SCA factories and got into central Sweden. The weather was sunny, but it must have snowed a lot in the last days with more than a meter of it on the roofs and next to the streets.

It was a long ride up to Vilhelmina, through pretty empty regions. Endless forests, few other cars , icy roads and frightening trucks carrying timber.

After the last hours driving in the dark…

… we reached Vilhelmina at 7pm, just in time for the first BSC Winter party, with almost all teams in one hotel, a lot of small talk about cars, winter-camping, etc.. As most teams drove between 6 to 9 hours that day, many of us got to bed before midnight.

Starting the heathing

Party gathering

Day 1 – 3

Day 2: Kristianstad – Gävle

On March 1, 2018April 8, 2018 By drcoreaLeave a comment

Sunday, February 25th, 2018
Distance covered: 740km
Driving time: 9am – 7pm
Weather: Sunny, snow and later heavy snow in the afternoon
Lowest temperature: -10C
Border crossings: none

The next morning, we realised we had BSC-company (Baltic Taxi / Team 68) and enjoyed breakfast together, before driving on a scenic road along red Swedish houses and snow-covered lakes towards Ryd. As task of the day, we had to find an abandoned car junkyard in a wood next to the street and the wreck of ABBA’s tour bus. It was a morbid, but beautiful scenery and just few other BSC team around.

On our way north we entered a fully snow-covered landscape and finally, left dry concrete roads and started to gain some first experiences with ice-covered roads. As always, driving is easy, hitting the brakes the real problem and curves something to watch out for. the good thing was, that we were more or less alone on the streets and only met another car only every 30 minutes.

Around 2pm we reached “Astrid Lindgren Country”, drove through Marinnelund und finally arrived in Gillerby where we visited the Katthult farm, where the famous “Michel aus Lönnberga” series from our youth was filmed.

Everything still was like in the movie, not a cardboard set-up, but a real small farm house in the middle of nowhere in Sweden, with Alfred’s house, the lake, the “Trissebude” and the shed were Michel did his woodcarvings.

Next, we tried Swedish McDonalds in Linköping, the home of Saab (these days jets only) and drove further north towards our final destination Gävle.

While we originally had planned to spend the night in Stockholm, we decided to get further north as the car was still making bad sounds and we anticipated that visiting the garage will cost time on a day that should get us up to Vilhelmina, to the first BSC party, we for sure didn’t want to miss.

At 7:30pm we arrived in Gälve in the dark with light snowfall and it seemed to snow a lot during the day, at least 30cm.

The hotel was easy but good and we could park just in front of it, which made it easy to carry our stock of beer and champagne inside, as the outside temperature was close to -10. Dinner was again a disappointment, but we enjoyed some local IPA and had a great sleep.

BSC 2018: Day 1: Hamburg – Kristianstad

On March 1, 2018December 20, 2019 By drcoreaLeave a comment

Saturday, February 24th, 2018
Distance covered: 520km
Driving: 13pm – 7pm
Weather: Cold (for Hamburg), sunny, later some snow and wind
Lowest temperature: -5C
Border crossings: Germany – Denmark (border controls) – Sweden (no control)

After first beers with other BSC teams in the Haifischbar and a great re-union with old friends on Friday night, we had a last hering-free breakfast on Saturday morning before getting to the start location at Hamburg’s Fishmarket.

With sunny but cold weather, all 47 team cars lined up at the Elbe river / harbour, signed up and got their road books, with instructions on the route, the party locations as well as “the challenge of the day” to earn points for winning the rallye. A TV station was around, pictures taken and last instructions provided. The variety of cars made it quite obvious, that we can expect a great mix of teams: old Land Rover, Mercedes G-class, 3 girls in a Range Rover, 2 very Bavarian cars with guys in Lederhosen as well as a team supported by a crowd of pink bunnies (I checked: no bachelor party).

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1830229796996015.1073741868.175814942437517&type=1&l=2fd8e2cd3a

Finally, around 12:00, every car drove on stage and off we went!

Though in general, highways are out-of-bounds during the BSC (besides three 300km jokers), they could be used on day 1. So, we left the city of Hamburg and took the highway towards Puttgarden on the German Island of Fehmarn, to take on a ferry boat to Denmark. The other option would have been a bridge in northern Denmark, but with 7.500km in front of us, we chose the more expensive but less kilometre option, especially because our car started to make some strange high-pitch noise.

The ferry took about an hour until we got to Denmark, we drove towards Kopenhagen and across the very long Öresund Bridge to Sweden.

As it was already slowly getting dark, we skipped the task of the day: a Viking baptism with a stone from Denmark and iron from Sweden, etc. at some old Viking location at the shore. Instead we drove further up north to the nice Swedish town Kristianstad and stayed in a pretty nice and friendly hotel. The only thing missing for a perfect evening was a decent Swedish restaurant, so we ended up in an “Italian” restaurant with waiters from Serbia and Albania (“buona sera” didn’t work), food with at least Italian names and luckily: Bavarian “Kloster Weltenburg Weißbier”.

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