I never told my guide Jonas that I had a pretty dire phobia of waves. Monsters, however, don’t scare me. The weather in Östersund was a complete wash-out so I decided it could only get wetter and went in search of Storsjöodjuret, the Great Lake Monster. On a water scooter.
Like Scotland’s Loch Ness legend, there lives a huge serpent creature, 14 metres long, with a head like a cat in Sweden’s fifth biggest lake – so the story goes. The first recorded sighting dates back to 1635 and since then around 500 people reckon they’ve seen it too.
Orange monster on scooter ready for action
Including Jonas. Last year he was out on the lake and from a distance saw what he believed to be two small boats in the water which mysteriously disappeared as he drew closer.
Further investigation lead Jonas to agree with me that the boats could have just sailed away. I found his testimony less than convincing but the monster scooters were the real thing – notching a nifty 80 kilometres per hour – and I was keen to start the test drive.
Jonas’ 84-year-old grandmother had ventured out on one of these machines so I figured I was in for a fairly smooth ride. She did, however, demand a double whisky on returning to dry land. Our route was to take us 18 kilometres out to a small island, passing the places where the monster had apparently been seen. But not today.
In 1894, Norwegian hunters tried to capture the creature using a dead pig as bait. I had saved a bit of ham from my lunchtime sandwich and threw it in the water. Again, the monster didn’t bite.
Ten kilometres out and I was concentrating more on the steering than monster-spotting as the wind took a turn for the worst. My backside hadn’t quite recovered from the previous day’s Tour de Härnösand and was getting another beating, so to speak. Still no monster.
At one point I closed my eyes as we thrashed through some high and mighty waves while the rain continued to lash down. Probably not a good idea, especially since I was looking for a you-know-what. As we reached the island, the score was still one-nil and I was losing but glad for a bit of respite ashore. A double-whisky would have been ok too.
Calmer waters on our return trip allowed me to perfect some cool scooter moves before my red warning light started flashing and beeping. I was hoping it was the monster GPS signal but unfortunately it was just a necessary refuel.
As I returned to shore, soaked and monster-less, I set my sights instead on finding a 13-metre high horse somewhere in the midst of my next stop – Dalarna.
