*15 August 2025* After our social day yesterday, we were back in the car, pushing hard for the north. 410 kms, mostly up the Baltic coast. ![[03-GNT - Map.jpeg]] It felt like moving through layers of Swedish history and landscape in one long sweep. Leaving the red-ochre mining town of Falun, once the heart of Sweden’s copper wealth and a UNESCO World Heritage site, we travelled east towards Gävle. Here, the countryside opens into rolling farmland and coastal plains, dotted with forests of pine and spruce. Gävle itself (home of Gevalia coffee) is a city marked by resilience: a devastating fire in 1869 destroyed much of it, leading to a carefully planned reconstruction with wider streets and stone buildings. Continuing north past Söderhamn and the Hälsingland coast, the scenery alternated between coastal bays and deep forest. Söderhamn has its own fire history, with blazes in the 19th century shaping its wooden quarters. By Sundsvall, the landscape began to feel more rugged, with the Gulf of Bothnia glinting to the east. Sundsvall is famously “the stone city”: after a catastrophic fire in 1888 destroyed over 9,000 wooden homes, it was rebuilt in grand stone architecture, financed largely by the timber industry. The weather was nice until Härnösand where, while charging our car for the second time, the heavens opened in a torrential downpour. The continuing rain disappointingly prevented us from getting a full picture of the dramatically different terrain of Höga Kusten (the High Coast) - as you will see from these two photos taken from the High Coast Bridge, one of Sweden's longest suspension bridges. ![[03-GNT - 4.jpeg]] ![[03-GNT - 5.jpeg]] Höga Kusten is one of the world’s clearest examples of 'post-glacial rebound'. When the last Ice Age ended around 10,000 years ago, the enormous weight of the ice sheets melted away, and the land began to rise. Here, the uplift has been dramatic—over 800 meters since the ice retreated, the greatest known on earth. Even today the coast is still climbing, about 8 millimetres a year, slowly reshaping the shoreline, lifting old beaches into forests and leaving stranded islands inland. Eventually we reached Skuleberget, with its visible ancient shoreline, the most striking marker of this ongoing transformation. We settled into our camp site where our little awning gave us extra protection. The rain cleared enough to offer some lovely see views. ![[03-GNT - 6.jpeg]] ![[03-GNT - 8.jpeg]] ![[03-GNT - 9.jpeg]] ![[03-GNT - 10.jpeg]] ![[03-GNT - 11.jpeg]] ![[03-GNT - 12.jpeg]] << [[The GNT, Day 2 - Falun & Borlänge]] | [[The GNT, Day 4 - Skuleberget]] >>