Road Tripping to the Top of the World - Adventures in the Arctic

”The night became complete, the clouds parted and far above, the northern lights began to shimmer in welcome

The Arctic. It’s one of the world’s last frontiers, existing up there at the top of the world, and on the edge of our imaginations. A place of pack ice, polar bears and shimmering auroras. Of biting cold, bounding snowfields and bulging mountains. To visit the top of our world is to create memories that will last a lifetime. To drive there, in winter? That’s real bucket list stuff.

And that’s exactly what our resident road tripper Ben Coombs did over the first two weeks of March 2025.

The idea behind the inaugural Snowstorm Rally to the Arctic was a little self indulgent. Having owned the ClassicLine-sponsored Volvo 240 for years, I felt it was high time that it made a road trip back home to Sweden. Naturally, this could be done easily enough in summer, but to make the trip in Winter would be much more memorable. And while there, why not carry on up to the Arctic Circle? An idea for a two-week winter road trip was forming. And as everyone knows, road trips are so much better with company, so why not make the idea an official Pub2Pub trip, and invite the world along?

Such was the thinking which led to the creation of the Snowstorm Rally.

When I launched the event, I expected the event to get a few adventurous takers. Five or six, perhaps. However, clearly Pub2Pub folk are rather more adventurous than I realised, as when the trip left the UK at the beginning of March, it numbered no less than 18 cars. And what an eclectic group they made! From the trio of Volvo 240s to the brace of transaxle Porsches; from the Jaguar XJ6 to the unstoppable Jeep, variety was the spice of life, with extra spice being added through the roof racks, spot lights and stickers that many plucky snowstormers added to their steeds.

Driving to the Arctic certainly isn’t the work of a moment. Even a cursory glance at an atlas reveals that, and most of the entrants covered a bit over 4,000 miles on the round trip. But those miles were most certainly worth it.

They started fairly innocuously, though. Rolling across northern Europe to Denmark, checking out the sights and getting to know each other as we adjusted to life on the road, was pretty standard road trip stuff. And when we reached Stockholm, the adventure even morphed into a city break, with two nights in Sweden’s capital allowing plenty of time to take in sights such as the incredible Vasa galleon, and the Abba museum. But then, as we continued north through Sweden, our world began to change. Winter gripped the landscape tighter with the passing hours, Sweden’s endless forests acquiring a blanket of snow, it’s lakes a surface of ice. Approaching the town of Ostersund, this ice became thick enough to drive on, and the snowstormers enjoyed their first taste of driving on a frozen lake, before continuing north, winter gripping the landscape ever tighter.

The crossing into Norway saw the first – and only – literal snowstorm of the Snowstorm rally, as we drove along a road surfaced in compacted snow, which seemed to merge into the blizzard above. But the winter tyres with which all our cars were fitted proved transformative when it came to grip on the frigid surfaces, and soon we were dropping into a freshly dusted Norway, just south of the Arctic Circle. And then, as the night became complete, the clouds parted and far above, the northern lights began to shimmer in welcome.

Crossing into the Arctic is an exercise in drama.

The road climbs as it approaches the circle, and you find yourself on a snowy plateau, the blue of the sky and the white of the land the only colours worth mentioning. And there, 600 metres above sea level with the air a crisp 17 degrees below zero, you pull over to mark the occasion. Because after all, driving to the Arctic in winter isn’t exactly something many can claim to have done.

But the call of the deep north is strong, and so many snowstormers continued onwards, deeper into the Arctic. It is a world of looming mountains and plunging fjords, of graded ice-roads and powdery snowmobile trails. A world where you can see the ice crystals from your breath falling in the light of your headlights when you park, and where miles from anyone, the snow-smothered silence can be absolute.

A world worth driving 2,000 miles each way to experience.

And the drive back from the Arctic was one of drama too. Norway just kept on delivering, impressing with its next level landscapes, and the engineering marvels which make up its roads. The city of Trondheim welcomed us with warmth and fine food, the town of Lillehammer flaunted its ski jump and other Olympic additions. The bridges of the Atlantic Highway soared snowstormers through the sky, while just outside Oslo the polar ship Fram, one of the crown jewels of Arctic exploration, impressed all who toured her.

But for me, the original purpose of the drive wasn’t fulfilled until the day after we’d crossed back into Sweden. There, as snow fell from the sky, a double-bill of automotive culture awaited. Firstly, in Trollhattan, there was the Saab museum. But a few hours down the road, on the outskirts of Gothenburg, the ClassicLine Volvo rolled into World of Volvo, not too far from where it was built. That idea of taking my Volvo home had come to pass, and it was time to carry on, back across northern Europe to the UK, and close out the inaugural Snowstorm Rally – an incredible adventure which will live long in the memory.