Campsite: Skelleftea Campsite
After leaving Umea on Thursday morning, we tracked 130km further north following the national highway E4. Having said, the term highway becomes quite a loose concept as it was covered in snow and ice along various parts of the route slowing us down to the odd 30km/h.
In fact, it felt very much like driving the dirt roads at home incl the "waschbrett" / riffle effect
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| Highway (E4) to Skelleftea |
The campsite here is very beautiful and even has a small, one lift Ski Piste as well as magic carpet for the little ones. On arrival we did note that the lift was not working and the piste was deserted and this was due to a very, simple legal reason: (I can hear you think Covid again...) No, the ski lift was closed because it was too cold!!
Yip, ski resorts and schools, by law, are not permitted to be open when it is colder than -18 degrees. And at 2:30pm in the afternoon we were sitting at -19.5
As I was telling my parents; up to now I could quickly dash across the parking lot into the grocery store without getting majorly dressed. Try this in this weather and you pretty much start getting frostbite on your hands immediately. So gloves on, beanie on and then you can cover the 50m without being in absolute agony.
Nonetheless we got settled, had a quick walk around and then went to bed.
This morning I woke up, opened the tap to fill the Nespresso Machine and.... nothing. No water - in any tap. I couldn't hear the water pump. Sh*t.
So we all get dressed, go out and lo and behold the garage heating was below par and it looks like our water pump is frozen. If the water pump is frozen, the water pipes are frozen and if they burst.... ai karamba.
We're in speed mode now: the emergency ceramic heater is brought out and directed at the pump in the garage, I'm underneath the bus knocking off all the ice which had accumulated, Timm switches on another heating pipe in the garage (which was switched off at the time) and we're both madly googling on what could be the cause of the pump not working (other than hypothermia).
Timm finds the magic bullet - the freshwater breather hole was frozen closed and an airlock had developed. As soon as we cleared the hole, the air lock was broken and the pump started up again! Tragedy averted...
In hindsight (after a quiet evening to reflect), it is quite astounding to see how much experience we have gained with having to solve these challenges. It has most definitely been a steep, often draining, learning curve.
Late morning we left for Leo's Lekland, an indoor playground. Seb needed to burn off some energy that had accumulated after being cooped up in 10m2 for three days and I desperately had to get some work done.
Leo's was a success and the late afternoon it had warmed up to a balmy -3 degrees so we spent an hour on the kiddie slope tobogganing :-)
On a side note: our DHL package containing our Stairs Control Unit and some Christmas Presents have arrived at the reception in Lulea, in fact, I think we saw the package overtake us yesterday on the way from Umea!
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