29-Apr-2001 -- My brother and I were in the area for a very special occasion:
Our grandmothers 90th birthday. I had noticed a few months earlier that
there is confluence close to the place where the celebrations were to be
held. I live in Uppsala about four hours by car north of this place, while
my brother lives in Bruxelles in Belgium. In order to make this expedition a
success we enlisted the support of two more people: my father who loaned us
his GPS device and my uncle who provided us with the necessary local maps.
On the morning after the celebrations my brother and I set out for the short
trip from Gamleby to the confluence, a trip of about 25 kilometers or so.
Despite the sunny weather it was a cool morning due to a cold wind that was
blowing, we sure are waiting for spring to take a firm hold of Sweden.
While preparing for the trip we noticed that the confluence was very close
to a small lake just by the side of a small road! We were lucky because
neither of us had brought clothes for a longer walk in the forest... We were
both unfamiliar with the GPS device and experienced a problem initially
until we realized that the device was set to the "Swedish Grid" setting,
once that small detail was cleared we were ready to start our quest.
Quest? Well, basically we just had to stop the car and get a few meters into
the forest and the confluence was right there waiting for us. In order to
find the "right" spot we had to walk around for some time before we could
get the GPS to settle down and the result can be seen in the pictures. What
you can see is a rather ordinary swedish forest. Close to the spot there is
an old forest road used by heavy machinery for harvesting trees years back.
The lake close by can be seen through the trees. Unfortunately we were not
able to catch any moose or deer close to the confluence so we were left to
taking pictures of ourselves.