If you walk in the forests of Sweden for any distance you will become aware of areas of stone that sit rather incongruously between the pines. The forest floor is carpeted with moss and lichen with a littering of rocks. Surprisingly these rocks are smooth, with patches of lichen on them and vary uniformly in size, becoming larger as the hill drops down towards the sea.

At first you just amble and enjoy the view from these open spaces but eventually after crossing a number of these “beaches” of stone your mind wonders as to how they got here and why? I say beaches because to all intents and purposes they look the same as a wave washed beach that is down at sea level. So I did a bit of research to find out what this phenomenon was doing high above the sea.

The answer is quite extraordinary: Imagine the last Ice Age, the immensity of 3km of ice on top of the land pushing the continents that were under its grip down into the mantle. Eventually the ice has melted and the land has been rebounding (Post-Glacial Rebound) since then with enough time between the rebounds to allow the sea to make beach after beach. This picture was taken at a beautiful campsite on the Swedish High Coast at Norfallsvicken and shows one of those beaches that now is at least half a mile away and much higher up than the sea level today. I spend a day or two here after the Russian Adventure just enjoying the nature and stillness of this part of the world.