Driving Northwards

I took this picture on the way up to Umeå and Tavelsjö, where we will spend the weekend doing Tai Chi with a local group. They meet every week, but we only appear twice a year, when there's a weekend course. The teacher is Ulf who leads both these weekend courses and the week long summer courses we go on.

The drive up to Umeå is in two sections. The first half is through the High Coast, a hilly area with lots of forest interspersed with rocky crags and long sea inlets. It's interesting, full of views, and generally beautiful, even in the present dodgy weather. What you see in the photo is fairly typical of the first half of the journey. The second half of the journey is through a totally flat, mostly forested landscape, where nothing much changes. After about 20 minutes of driving this section you start to think "Are we nearly there?" but of course you aren't. Our private name for this seemingly endless part of the drive is "The dead Zone".
As you emerge from this zone the first thing you see, about a kilometre before you reach it, is a huge building topped with the letters IKEA. Normally my heart sinks as I enter such a place but in this location joy takes over as I realise we are about to leave the Dead Zone!
Today the whole drive was fairly problem free, despite the snow, rain, sleet, and mist. There wasn't too much traffic and everyone was being sensible.
We arrived at the hotel on time and had a lovely Indian dinner with Karin and and her daughter Linnéa. Jan has written about all that so I won't bother to repeat her blip!