Day 5: It is -12*C and at departure from Vauldalen Monday morning. We are on our way to Brekken were schoolchildren greets us with singing and waffles. We also bring with us flowers to place next to the statue of a Forbonde in Brekken. It might seem a bit cliché but it is an opportunity to send a few thoughts to our ancestors in which footprints we travel.

It is a special experience traveling by horse. There are no annonymous part of the road like when you pass by in a car. Each feature in the landscape becomes part of a personal history. The root next to the road is the one that tipped the sleigh last year. The ice on the lake is where we were racing the horses across 10 years ago and the small hill on the other side is where someone fell off the wagon one way or the other :). This mean that we are not just traveling in the footprints of our ancestors but also in the traces of our own memories and hopefully we are creating a path for the future as we go. The schoolchildren from this morning were very interested and enthusiastic hopefully tomorrows forbönder. I am also very glad, not to mention impressed, that our oldest Coachman Alvar (84) is driving the whole route again this year. Annelie our youngest codriver is (24) so I belive there's hope for this tradition to carry on.

The County Govenor of Jämtland, Britt Bohlin, shows up for a surprisevisit at lunch to travel with us for the rest of the day. The snow is very deap in places and the last part of the day is perhaps a bit too exciting. At the farm Billehaugen they've made room for our horses in their stables but most of us twolegged participants go back to Vauldalen to spend the night.

The sauna is hot and the beer Icecold when we get back and everything is ready for a last evening with good friends before we reach the final destination...