Time to get on the road again. Spent a wonderful couple of days with friends from Rome, foraging for mushrooms and wild blueberries and strawberries in the forest, fishing on the local river and generally having a great time catching up.

Started out following little back roads, including some that were unsurfaced, but decided to switch to the main road to put some miles under my belt.

The scenery is the same either way - endless tracts of forest. Made me think of the dog in the Eddie Murphy Dr Doolittle film - tree, tree, tree...

And reindeer, lots and lots of reindeer, sometimes on the side of the road, often in the middle. There are long stretches when you don't see any, and it is easy to get lulled into a false sense of security and drop your vigilance - and there's another one of the blighters in the middle of the road!

I ended up doing over 750 km for the day. The weather stayed fine, and the sun stayed high, so I just kept going, only stopping for fuel and refreshments. Along the way, I came across the 'Silent People' installation - a field with a thousand scarecrows standing in series ranks. Weird. And the information on it provides no explanation as to the intended meaning - you just have to work it out for yourself.

I crossed the Arctic circle just before 7 p.m., stopped for the obligatory selfie, and carried on.

I took a brief look at a campsite at about 8:30 in the evening but it didn't take my fancy, so I thought I would just have a look at the next one. An hour later, I just stopped at the first campsite I saw and booked into a hut - too tired to pitch the tent.

Glad I did, because I woke up to the sound of rain on the roof.

I don't think I will try to push so far in a day from now on, the aftereffects are just not worth it.

(I should have re-read this entry and reminded myself of that last statement, because it was an error I was to repeat several times over the course of the trip.)