Dalarna

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We were travelling through Dalarna and looking for something other to do besides wandering round a town. Our Wild Guide to Scandinavia mentioned an observation tower at Mejdasen. It told us to pick up a free map at the local supermarket in Bjorbo and then it was an hours walk from there. Sounded easy enough except the local supermarket we found called Tempo didn’t have any maps and there wasn’t much else in Bjorbo! We drove to Darla-floda to see if we could get anything there but to no avail. Not to give up too easily we put the co-ordinates into the sat nav and the route didn’t look too complicated. We made up a packed lunch, yep bread and cheese with a few tomatoes thrown in and headed off. It was hot and obviously the walk was uphill so Bernie was struggling a little especially when the sat nav started to have a melt down. “Make a u-turn” half way up a steep slope. Luckily Phil said wait there and I’ll go on and do a scout. A little while later he phoned to say he had found it no thanks to the sat nav. It was worth the trek though. A wooden tower very sturdily built in the 1940s by local forest owners for fire watching. It had fantastic views from the mountains on the border with Norway in one direction and along the Vasterdalaven valley in the other.The tower has a large room at the bottom with a table and benches so we left Jeffrey there as he is not keen on climbing steps with gaps in them. Phil counted 97 steps to the top, It was a great view and well worth the climb.

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