Säfsen XC Skiing with Västerås SOK

Arrival in Västerås

Me and Lizzie arrived absolutely knackered after getting up at 0130 and hopping on the 0630 flight from Stansted.  We were greeted by Rickard and wisked off to their house in the centre of Västerås.

After a few hours kip we ventured into Västerås and went shopping - well, we went around the original H&M and had a nutritious McDonalds (oh dear!).  The weather was miserable and the rain was pretty yuk.  Still we wandered towards Djärkneberget (a lovely park in the middle of Västerås with lots of rock inscriptions).  We fell over a lot and slipped on the rocks and we pretended to be trees.  Lovely.  

 

At 5 Rickard and Sofi drove us all up to Säfsen.  Well we stopped off at Ludvika for the best thai curry I've ever tasted.  Yellow and gorgeous.  Still no sign of snow and we were less than 50km from the "ski" tracks.  Come on... snow!!

We arrived with some snow on the ground and me and Lizzie were so excited.  The Swedes weren't as they said this wasn't real snow.  We were amazed.  

After getting up at 0130 and travelling to Sweden, I decided it would be a great idea to stay up til 0100 the next morning talking to Jonathan, Sofia and Håkan about Sweden while Lizzie, Rickard and Sofi slept...zzzz.

Skiing!!

 

We got up and ate our ICA fruit musli and looked out the window....

SLUSH...

Still,  everyone was up for skiing and got our skiis waxed and ready to roll.  It's quite scary after not skiing for a good year and a bit to get back on skiis, but we got on pretty well - Lizzie storming off ahead with me and Sofia lagging behind.  After about 5km we got the hang of it and XC is SO different to downhill skiing its unbelievable.  It's like ice skating on huge long thin skiis.  Fun though - and apparently the conditions were poor!

Back for lunch at the cabin and we had a lovely leek and ham potato thing.  Yum... then straight back out for more skiing! 

...and now it was SNOWING!  great fun messing about in the snow.  We took tonnes of photos and had an amazing time making snowmen, watching the sun set and basically dicking about while getting faster and faster at this XC skiing lark!

That night we had a nice Bolognaise made by Håkan and went around to see Elin etc. and to eat lots of chocolate cake.  Good times.

The next morning disaster struck.  It had been the clearest night ever and the snow had all frozen.  We were tentative and not very controlled on the ice.  

Lizzie fell very badly and hurt her ribs while we were alone on the tracks.  She kept on blacking out and began to hyperventilate.  She started to go dizzy so we sat in the snow for a while waiting for people to come past... we walked back the 2km to the car and got Lizzie nice and warm.  Sounded like she may have had a cracked rib!  Not good...

Still we had a great weekend of skiing and it was so different to anything I'd tried before.  Definitely going to do it again next year.