Right! Norway/Sweden. Left Terminal 5. It was wet and miserable. And really early. There was a f**k load of turbulance, and the plane had to go low and slow because it was pretty violent. Coming into Norway (Oslo) it was fecking freezing!!!! -10* all the time. Oslo has a heated runway, which is cool. What is even cooler is the constant stream of lorries clearing the run ways, and how the country operates in these conditions. Which would paralyze the entire country if it was that cold over here! f**king Norway!!! So Lee and I had arrived, it was so cold the machine in the car park had stopped working. So the other guys all bundled into horrible mini busses. 8 in each. Lee and I weren't going to sit by and let our guides load all the bags whilst everyone sat in the warm vans. So we helped them. Our reward for this...A Volvo XC90 with heated leather seats for the duration of our trip. Get in!!! Conditions were umm...Challenging? As we made our way across Norway it was apparent that this country was insane. We were smashing along the equivalent of A roads at 100Kms, in two inches of compacted snow without a single sign of traffic or collision. In Norway it is illegal to drive a car without winter tyres for almost 6 months of the year, then in "warm" seasons the tires are collected and the drive is resupplied with their summer tires. So the authorities store and rotate two sets of tires for every driver. Cool huh? The houses in Norway are weird, but rather cool. They are ALL wooden built once you leave Oslo. They all have to use regulation insulation, and are all built to the tightest of standards. Inside, they are beautiful. We travelled across Norway with an end goal of Torsby, in Sweden. It is part of Varmland country, and is west central Sweden. Torsby is incredible! We arrived at our hotel, to a warm welcome and some local food. We settled into the hotel, got our stuff in our rooms and kicked back in the lodge. We waited until night time, because thats when you can have fun. Sunday afternoon we got our first taste of ice driving. I had left my european charger at home, so this is the last picture I took of the night. A small group of us received an hour or so's tuition in M3's, a Porsche 911 and a Subaru Imprezza. It was amazing fun!!! Driving around frozen lakes, rally stages and small holdings. Oh, and my aforementioned run in with a very kind gentleman who taught me how to drive a Subaru Impreza properly by unsettling the car and twitching away from corners to unsettle the weight and motion of the car, then pointing the steering wheel at the apex and giving full power. But at the time...I didn't know he was. The rest of the group went off to a motor museum in Torsby town. We joined them later on. By this point my phone was charged, so after changing at the lodge we set into Torsby with Petter's PA and headed to his own personal car collection. Again, at this point Lee and I were entirely unaware of what we were walking into... We opened the small door to a little industrial unit in a fairly low key estate in Torsby town. We were told, this place wasn't open to the public and only friends were allowed in. Now when being invited to see somebody's "personal" car collection in Sweden, you'd expect a couple of Volvo's in a shed. Impressive. We were talked through these cars, what they were, when they were rallied etc. All of which I knew, but it was fascinating hearing this person be so passionate about them. They were all open, with the keys in them. As we got to this car, the Subaru next to it was uncovered. "First one in the world" we were told. "We build this car first." I asked, "how much did that cost! Wow, you must really love Subaru's!" "This was free. I don't pay." "Oh?" "Subaru give us this car when we win 2003 world rally championship." f**k. It transpires, this incredible car collection, tucked into a little industrial unit somewhere out the way in Sweden, and the person teaching me how to drive, who I'd just rugby tackled into a snow drift is in fact Petter Solberg. Unbelievable. So he took a couple of pictures of me with his cars. I asked him for a "selfie" with him, but to be honest. He didn't really care for one. Instead, he took pictures of me with his 2003 winning Impreza and signed everything I had on me. Including my phone. THIS was my favorite car though. Prawn will like this picture. We went to the bar, all got shit faced and woke up at 5:30 the next morning. Shit! Snow. Lots of f**king snow! Snow, is not good when you are going ice racing. What you want, is ice. So, a warm bowl of Swedish Museli. And off we went, to probably the most famous test and training facility in the world of WRC. Anttila!!!! A couple of cars were bought up there for me to drive. After some messing about, the rest of the group went off for some snowmobiling whilst we went ice racing! Actual leg of the Swedish rally. Uhhuh... Lee, bless him. Decided he was going to wear trackie bottoms, trainers and tucked in socks. It was -18... This is Leezo, on a 90m deep frozen lake. That's f**king massive. In trackie bottoms. What. A. Legend. Off we went then, in my new favorite car in the world ever. An M3 converted E36 compact ice race car. Don't let the blandness of it put you off, or the shit wheels. This is a full on 100 grand+ race car.
This, was by far my favorite car ever. INSANE. I love it, I want one. I'm buying one. I went for the Scoobaroo, which only had winter tires on it...Not race tires. This was maybe an error. It was quick as f**k, 4WD and very well built. It was also very tail happy haha. Leezo swapping out of the M3 after some stonking laps. As you can see by the snow build up, around the wheel arches. We were racing in TERRIBLE conditions. Light was fading fast, not due to time of day, but the amount of snow fall. And there was so much snow it was almost impossible to see the cut in the ice/where the snow track had been cleared. And if you came off, you'd be in 5 feet of snow and waiting for the ice to be cleared so a 5 ton tractor could come and dig you out. So nobody wanted to crash. Now, this will sound terrible. But up until this point, I was f**king awesome. I was so good at it, that the instructors asked me if I would like to come back with them to help on the trips next year. Things were good! And in my mind, I'd found something that I wanted to do. I'd been planning on buying rally cars all day. However, inevitably. I had a rather large crash. All day I'd been driving a 400bhp Subaru, and a 340bhp Maf-less M3 compact. So you'd think, getting into a 1.6 Zetec Ford Focus race car it would be a walk in the park? After all, it had 5000Kr per corner ice racing tires on it, and I'm all about FWD. Right? Denied. I got in the car, stalled it immediately. Everyone laughed. I spun it on the first corner. Went round the second corner at 40kmh. And crashed it hugely on the third. Tits. Lake closed, sat in a Focus burried 4/5feet deep in snow so I couldn't open the door. The lake was closed, all cars pulled off and the tractor came on to get me. We pulled the focus out, cleaned the hard packed snow out of the engine bay, steering arms etc etc. Then whilst I did that everybody got on for the last half hour. EVERYONE hated me because they'd come all that way, and I'd lost them loads of laps. I was pretty suicidal. So I drove back up a leg of the Swedish WRC, which is beautifully prepared for the coming weeks when the WRC descends on Sweden. I was sad, I'd made a total tit of myself, damaged the car and I only had myself to blame. So naturally, I blamed it on a sticking throttle stopping me from getting the weight to the front wheels. This was a good idea I thought. It clearly wasn't a sticking throttle, and my race drivers excuse lost me multiple man points. So I just claimed I saw a bear run out in front of me and I swerved to avoid it. Which is exactly what Ken Block said when he wrote off his Fiesta at Antilla lake. f**king bear. Having disgraced myself, and made a total cock of myself. I decided to eat some Moose Lasagna (which was amazing)and then go f**k about on Snowmobiles with Lee. This was fun!
It was getting late and we needed to get back to Oslo. So we packed up, said our thank yours and goodbyes, exchanged numbers with multiple international stars and parted company. We stayed in the Grand Hotel in Oslo, which is where the winner of the Nobel peace prize always stays. Posh as f**k. They have beer fountains available on the roof, above the tables. So you can get shit faced quite quickly. We drank. Lots. It's illegal to be publically drunk in Norway, and it's illegal to order a double. We soon took care of that. We staggered out of the Restaurant at 1AM. We staggered out of Andy's Piano bar at 2:30 when they closed. We decided to go ice skating in -12 at 3AM. We found a very dodgy bar which was open at half 3. About quarter to 5, a lad called Jack and I were the only people left standing. So we took a selfie outside a 6000Kr per night hotel, abused the Consiage when he tried to refuse us entry. Then ran back to our rooms for 3 hours sleep. When I woke up in the morning (fully clothed obviously) and in the bath, I was a bit f**king minging. I went for a walk around, did some shopping, puked up in a bin and visited the Gestapo head quaters. I flew home, and slept like a baby. And that, is how I like to do a trip to Norway/Sweden.
