Kommunjakt (borough hunt)

It started before the pandemic, of that I am sure. My geocaching activities started to slow down both in terms of numbers found but also how often I made the effort to get out and look for them. Of course, I had excuses, none of which were really valid. If I had wanted to go geocaching there was nothing to stop me, not even a global pandemic!

Until 2020 I had a geograpic specific target to ”find at least one cache in a new country”. That got changed for 2021 to be ”find caches in 10 new boroughs (kommuner) in Sweden” as international flying was difficult and something I was actually pleased to avoid after 40+ years of international business travel.

Even so the planned travel activity for 2021 didn’t happen – until now! I should perhaps have made the trip during the heat wave in June but I waited until the continual downpours we had and are having now. We were lucky, I chose a day where we were able to drive away from the rain all the time, so while the neighbours were paddling along flooded street in Gävle we were enjoying good weather.

The route was pretty much fixed, all that was uncertain was if I would do the 950 km journey as a solo day trip or if I would take two days with an overnight stop somewhere if my partner wanted to come with me. She did, even though geocaching is not her thing. Of course, that added several hours to the trip as ”sightseeing” came into the equation.

Our route

The plan was to find caches in the boroughs of: Sollefteå, Ragunda, Krokom, Åre and Berg. Sollefteå is in Västernorrland and the other four in Jämtland. Of course I had run a couple of Pocket Queries and chosen caches close to the route and with plenty of favourite points.

Some of the photos below are spoilers so be aware of that.

Just rotate to open!

It couldn’t have started better. The first find in Sollefteå was Skoogstokig #Snurrigt. I had no idea what to expect but once on site it was obvious what I needed to do.

If I was doing a solo trip I would have turned round and headed towards Bispgården and tried to find a few more caches from the same CO. Instead we cariied on into Sollefteå where we had a wander around and a picnic close to Strandpromenaden #11 – Nipstadsfisket. There are still quite a few older buildings in Sollefteå and it’s always great to see the old neon signs.

Old neon sign in Sollefteå

The next stop was in Ragunda or to be more precise, in the vicinity of Bispgården. For me that is the home of the Thai Pavillion which I visited many years ago before geocaching was invented!

Here I made the aquaintance of Roffe Skoogstokig #Peek a Boom.

ROFFE !!

It was so much fun pulling his tail I did it several times.

After that it was time to log a find at one of my favourite types of cache container – a bird box. This was better than the average bird box though. Skoogstokig # En holk. I can see that I need to upgrade my artwork on the bird box caches I use.

A pretty neat bird box

Another sign cache was Skoogstokig #9 MMMMM which was a fine piece of engineering.

“Twist and shout” to open

I would have stayed in the area to find more of the CO’s cacher but we were behind schedule so we continued on even though we spent a huge amount of time visiting Wildhussens werk which is a Virtual and as a person interested in geology a fantastic place to stop.

Hole through the rock formed in the ice age

A walk down the dead falls

I always try to stop at Challenge caches Challenge #147 – Alla kommuner i 5 län even though they are often just a PET hanging in a tree. Sometimes there could be something else of interest nearby. Never heard of this company before though.

What do Hallströms do?

I was looking forward to visiting Gamla lanthandeln in Krokom but this was the one day this summer that they closed early so we didn’t get to see the inside and therefore no smiley.

Old country shop in Krokom

Another couple of easy caches were logged before we drove on to Mattmar in Åre Mattmars Kyrka.

Mattmar church bell tower

From there we turned south and headed towards Åsarna where we had booked a room for the night.

In Svenstavik we found E 1194 – Loket som försvann after a few turns around the hiding place.

Buffers in Svenstavik

Here I won’t give a spoiler as this was an cunning hide but not impossible to find. E1194 is actually in Gävle, at the railway museum that is presently closed (still) but due to reopen in a couple of years time.

The evening ended with ordering a pizza and being given an extra one as the baker had made a mistake. Both tasted great!

After a good nights sleep we headed home. No geocaching was planned but we stopped at a few caches on the way.

One cache of note was Macken and the experience was enhanced by a period Cadillac arriving at the same time as us.

Old petrol station

In Bollnäs we decided to make a detour to Söderhamn as there was a cache there that I needed to find to fill an irritating gap in the Jasmer calendar. Stadsparken was nothing special other than when it was placed. It was easier to retrieve than Blåkulla which was placed on the same date.

3-D printed container

The cache was retrieved at around 4 pm on a Friday. The weekend traffic was intense which was great as no-one bothered about me climbing up a post at the side of the road!