Monthly Archive

Think “outside the box” when planning your presents this year…

Take a moment to think back to last Christmas - the family gathering, the wine and good food….and the presents you received. Of these, no doubt some have remained close to your heart, treasured possessions that you will use and cherish for years to come, gifts given with love and thought and received with gratitude. But, almost certainly, among the piles of packages that peeked promisingly from beneath the Christmas tree were a reasonable number that you would have preferred never to receive, or whose appeal faded quickly after the first flush of excitement.

The same is probably true of the gifts you gave. Did the £90 Roboraptor hold the attention of the children as long as you’d hoped? Did you imagine that the Playstation 2 you bought would now be lying forgotten and unloved at the back of the cupboard while its new £350 cousin takes centre stage? Did your brother ever use that 50-piece screwdriver set you had hoped would revolutionise his DIY? Or perhaps behind the polite smiles of your partner as you handed over a well-intended piece of jewellery they were secretly praying you had kept the receipt?

Estimates for Christmas spending in the UK vary, but all the statistics paint a similar story. In 1996, a survey by debit card company Switch found that, on average, every person in Britain spent a staggering £710 at Christmas. By 1998 this had risen to £862. In 2002 the Family Welfare Association found that a family on an average income spent £564 on food, drink and decorations for Christmas Day alone.

Around 15 hours is spent on Christmas shopping and an extra two hours standing in queues at the till. A quarter of Britons take out loans to be able to afford the excesses of Christmas, while 40% admit that Christmas shopping causes them to feel stressed. Each year, Christmas in the UK generates over three million tonnes of waste.

What’s the alternative?

Buy memories – not stuff! An outdoor holiday in Sweden is not only a great experience in itself, but will leave you with fond memories for years to come, long after the joys of more material gifts have faded.

All our experiences in Sweden are carefully managed to minimise their environmental impact. Waste is kept to a minimum and recycled wherever possible. Where transport is required, fuel-efficient alternatives are favoured. If you choose to fly to Sweden, a small additional premium of £3.50 will offset the carbon emissions produced by your flight. Isn’t that a better alternative to acres of discarded packaging and a mound of unwanted presents?

What about the costs?

Let’s make a few comparisons:

A new 60GB Playstation 3 plus Guitar Hero III game currently costs around £420. So what could you do for a similar sum in Sweden?

Photo: Anders Dahlin Naturfoto

£342: A family of four (2 adults and 2 children under 16) could spend a week at an award-winning mountain station near the Norwegian border, with a wealth of activities available in the surrounding area from cross-country skiing to spa treatments.

Photo: Staffan Widstrand

£348: A family of four (2 adults and 2 children under 16) could take a 7-day wilderness canoeing trip along the beautiful slow-flowing Svartälven river camping wild along the way.

£401: A family of 6 could spend a week in the remote forests of Värmland in a traditional Swedish log cabin. The area is ideal for hiking, canoeing and fishing, and cabin rental includes use of a boat with environmentally-friendly 4-stroke engine to explore the surrounding lakes.

£414: A family of four (2 adults and 2 children aged 3-14) could spend three nights deep in the Swedish forest on our Winter Wonderland on a Forest Farm experience.

Or why not take your partner away for a romantic break…?

£229: Go wild in the wilderness with the one you love on a romantic log cabin break for two in the forests of Bergslagen. And you’ll still have £191 left over (why not add an elk safari or some extra nights?).

£376: Treat yourself and your partner on a weekend at our Country Manor multi-activity Getaway, with accommodation in two-room mini-suites, first-class cuisine and free use of kayaks, boats and cycles when you want to go exploring!

And that’s just for the price of one present!

How do I give a Nature Travels experience as a gift?

There are a number of options:

• If you are planning a trip with your partner or family, why not contact us and arrange the trip in secret as a surprise?
• Nature Travels experiences make ideal gifts for weddings or landmark birthdays. We are happy to produce a gift certificate for any of our experiences and let the recipients choose when they would like to travel.
• We also offer vouchers which can be redeemed against any of our experiences – perfect if you are making a contribution towards a trip or if you unsure exactly what kind of experience would be most suitable.

Think “outside the box” this Christmas – the experience will last a lifetime.

Best regards and Merry Christmas (or “God Jul”, as they say in Sweden!)

The Nature Travels Team

Sweden has something of a reputation when it comes to mosquitoes – but which stories are really true? We have tried to answer some of the questions we are frequently asked below:

What is a Swedish mosquito?

Confusingly, the Swedish work for mosquito, “mygg”, sounds less like “mosquito” and more like the English word “midge”, those small, fast-flying clouds of biting insects which have been the bane of many a camping trip in Scotland. Swedish “mygg” are larger, slower, and much easier to catch, and what is more they do not share the tendency of their smaller cousins in Scotland to mount kamikaze attacks on your dinner cooking quietly over the campfire…

Some areas of Sweden, particularly the north, do also have midges, or “knott”, but mosquitoes are much more widespread, distributed in varying densities throughout the country.

Are there a lot of mosquitoes in Sweden?

Yes, and no. The density and number of mosquitoes varies greatly depending on the time of year, the part of the country you are in and the degree of rainfall during the breeding season in spring and early summer. They generally appear around mid-June and disappear again towards the end of September, with numbers lowest at the beginning and end of the season. Since mosquitoes like water and birch forest they are not often found on the high plains away from the mountain stations. Although mosquitoes are present throughout Sweden, numbers are highest in the north of the country.

Mosquitoes go through four stages in their lifecycle: from egg to larva to pupa before finally becoming an adult. Water is essential for mosquitoes to breed, as mosquitoes spend the larval and pupal stages of their lifecycle in water. Most mosquitoes will become food for a wide variety of animals, but those that are not may live for 2-3 months.

Do Swedish mosquitoes bite?

Yes, they do. Sweden has 47 species of mosquito, 45 of which are the biting kind, though not all of these will bite humans. Only female mosquitoes bite humans, as they require the protein to breed.

Some people are particularly sensitive to insect bites and develop itchy red spots, while others seem to be little affected. Mosquitoes in Sweden can be a nuisance, but with some simple precautions the problem can be managed.

How can I avoid being bitten?

Generally, mosquitoes in Sweden are only a particular problem during dusk hours, and more in the north of the country than elsewhere. Wear long-sleeved (bite-proof!) shirts and trousers, and use a repellent if you wish. Cover your head with a hat or scarf. If you are particularly bothered by mosquitoes, you may find a net for your face helpful.

Do Swedish mosquitoes carry malaria?

No. Malaria was present in Sweden until the 18th and 19th centuries, when people lived in much closer proximity to their cattle, but disappeared from the country in the early 20th century.

Are mosquitoes all bad?

While most humans consider them a curse, there are a number of positive sides to the presence of mosquitoes:

• Mosquitoes provide an important source of food for many animals, from the tadpoles and fish which eat their larvae to the birds and bats which hunt for adults on the wing.
• In some countries, mosquitoes assist in the pollination of certain plant species, including Cattleya orchids. These plants in turn have leaves which collect small pools of water and host mini ecosystems of their own containing frogs, newts and toads.
• Spreading disease may seem like a negative, but maintaining the flow of bacteria and viruses around an ecosystem builds immunity and helps to strengthen populations as a whole by culling weaker animals.
• Finally, it is sometimes said that without the deterrent that mosquitoes provide to human settlement, some of our wildest and most beautiful places would have been colonised and developed to a far greater degree. So mosquitoes are actually powerful conservationists!

Mosquitoes are present in Sweden, and in some cases they can be a nuisance. But with simple precautions there is no reason why they should be more than a minor annoyance or spoil your enjoyment of some of the world’s most spectacular wild places. The Nature Travels Team feels strongly from personal experience that if you can survive a camping trip on the west coast of Scotland and live to tell the tale, you will have little difficulty dealing with Swedish mosquitoes!

Best regards
The Nature Travels Team

Nature Travels offers a wide range of outdoor holidays in Sweden, from canoeing to dog sledding to romantic log cabin breaks, for independents, families and groups of all ages and levels of experience.

There are two main misconceptions about the climate in Sweden: that it is always dark, and that it is always cold!

While there are certainly times when it is both dark and cold, the weather in Sweden is as varied as its landscape, as varied as the possibilities it offers for outdoor activities at any time of year.

Overall, Sweden has a very temperate climate given its northerly location. The North Atlantic Current warms air which is brought up from the southwest by low pressure winds in the Atlantic. From the east, high pressure zones bring bright, warm summer days and clear, crisp and cold winters, while the high mountains of Norway and the plateaux along the western edge of Sweden provide shelter from the mild, wet winds blowing in from the west. Levels of precipitation in Sweden are relatively low – the wettest period is in late summer and early autumn, while across large tracts of the country much of the winter precipitation falls as snow.

Summer

From late in May until mid-July north of the Arctic Circle, the sun never sets. About 15% of Sweden lies within the Arctic Circle - the Land of the Midnight Sun. Summer in the far north of Sweden is a magical time, with the long days making the possibilities for activities out of doors literally endless, plus the extra daylight means that somehow sleep feels almost unnecessary. You may be surprised to find that you are still fully energized for a hike in the mountains even in the early hours of the morning!

But you do not need to travel to the far north to experience many of the advantages of the long Swedish summer days. Even in Stockholm (only about 1/3 of the way up this vast country), there are only a few hours of semi-darkness during the summer months.

Summer in the north of Sweden is a short but beautiful period, and people make the most of the long days and milder temperatures. In the northeast, there are usually more days of sunshine and less cloud compared to the mountainous regions near to the Norwegian border in the west. In the far north, average temperatures in July are likely to be around 15 degrees C, though the long hours of daylight can lift temperatures surprisingly high. In the centre and south of the country, bright, warm summer days are common and the lakes and coastal waters offer the chance for idyllic bathing. In general, summers in the Stockholm area have similar temperatures to the south of England, but more days of sunshine. Out among the 24,000 islands of the Stockholm archipelago, it is commonly clear and sunny even when it may be cloudy just a few miles away in the heart of the capital.

Winter

Sweden is a very long country (around 2000km from north to south), and this, coupled with the higher altitudes of the mountainous regions to the north, makes for a great deal of variation in winter climate. Northern areas may experience snowfall for eight months a year, with temperatures that can drop to -40 degrees C and around 184 days a year with an average temperature of below zero, compared to 120 days in Stockholm and just 71 in the south.

In the depths of winter, the Stockholm area has only around five and a half daylight hours, while in the north of Lapland, the sun peeks above the horizon to give just 4 hours of twilight and almost 20 hours of complete darkness.

But the darkness is short-lived. Towards February/March the light returns, bringing with it an uplifting combination of the majesty of winter with the warm glow of early spring sunshine and longer hours of daylight. This “spring winter” is a wonderful time to be in the Swedish mountains. Even in deepest winter, the darkness is offset by the glow of the thick blanket of snow which covers the land throughout the winter months. Not only does this make the landscape brighter than one might expect, but it creates a cosy and welcoming atmosphere and a real feeling of winter. What’s more, the winter landscape in the far north is regularly illuminated with the spectacular displays of the Northern Lights (see our recent blog article here) in the night sky.

In the southern part of the country, winters are milder and less predictable. In southern Sweden, average temperatures in January may be just around freezing, and it is less common for the sea waters around the coast to freeze.

On the east coast of Sweden, the coastal waters of the Baltic Sea, which contained between Sweden on its western edge and Finland to the east, regularly freeze. The sea ice, as well as the thousands of lakes dispersed throughout the interior of the country, offer excellent opportunities for ice skating. Ice skating on natural ice, or “trip skating”, is a hugely popular pastime for all ages in Sweden and offers a truly unique way to experience the winter landscape.

An outdoor paradise in any season

One of the great advantages of the country as a holiday destination is that travelling to Sweden is a totally different experience depending on the season you visit, with enormous variations in climate and landscape as the seasons change. The Sami, the indigenous people of the vast northern mountain plains of Lapland, divide the year into eight seasons, not four:

• spring winter, when the pregnant reindeer females cause the herd to leave the forests and head for the mountains
• spring, when the snow melts and the reindeer give birth to their calves in the foothills
• pre-summer, when Sami livestock graze on the fresh growth carpeting the mountains
• summer, with its endless daylight hours, the time to mark the new-born calves
• pre-autumn, when the autumn colours begin to spread through the landscape and the reindeer bulls are slaughtered
• autumn, a season for fishing for the Sami and mating for reindeer
• pre-winter, when the reindeer herds are brought down from the mountains to more sheltered grazing in the marshlands
• winter, when the herds are moved into the protection of the forests to ride out the harsh winter until spring-winter arrives once more

Whenever you choose to visit, Sweden has something to offer in all its seasonal guises, from the deep snows of winter, through the meadows carpeted with flowers in spring, to the long lazy days of summer, and finally into the blazing glory of autumn as the forests turn and prepare for winter once again. Browse our full range of outdoor holidays in Sweden at www.naturetravels.co.uk!

Best regards
The Nature Travels Team