The planned ride was around a hundred and fifty kilometers with about forty kilometers of gravel roads while going towards the monument, and sticking to faster tarmac roads on the way home
BHPian swe.desi recently shared this with other enthusiasts:
Winter 2024
I had been poring over Google Maps marking gravel roads for a ride when I chanced upon a location called Fly monumentor Aviation Monument, that seemed interesting.
I had saved the location in my “Gravel roads” list and not thought much of it.
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30-May-2025:
Saturday was looking to be a sunny day with temperatures hovering around 15°C, perfect for a ride and to get some practice on gravel.
I planned a route on Friday evening, trying to chain together as many gravel roads as I could within a reasonable distance from my place. It so happened that the route was creeping up towards the monument I had saved many months ago, and so I found the destination for the ride.
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31-May-2025:
Had a slow start to the day and started at around Noon. There was no real urgency to start early as the ride would take around 5-6 hours with break(s), and the summer days are long with the sun setting after 9.
The air was cool, the sky was blue, the clouds were few and far away on the horizon, something out of a renaissance painting. It wasn’t long before I was riding alongside green fields, rolling hills, and forests spotted with small towns and farming communities. Everywhere I looked, there were flowers blooming.
The forest roads were much cooler, and I was getting used to riding on gravel. Spotted a red squirrel and a deer. It did take away from the scenery a bit, having to concentrate on the road and not going off into the ditch!
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The Aviation Monument:
On the 20th of October, 1944, an American courier plane crashed in Alingsås, near Gothenburg. The crash was attributed to bad weather and a couple of inexperienced crew members. None of the crew members survived, and the crash site was cleared with the help of the home guard and military.
A memorial was erected in May of 1945 to honor the fallen airmen.
I reached the monument parking lot, and from there it was a short walk in the woods to reach the monument itself. The woods themselves were mostly comprised of tall coniferous trees, the ground overgrown with moss and strewn with cones, and a few puddles at the side of the path. The already quiet surroundings became somehow quieter as I walked further inside the tree line. The songbirds were a not-unwelcome disturbance to the quiet, if anything adding another layer of tranquility with their melodic calls and whistles. A small bench to sit and soak it all in made it an extremely peaceful place to simply be.
The memorial itself is not grand. It consisted of a stone monolith with inscriptions on both sides and the propeller of one of the engines mounted on one side. The propellor somehow survived without a lot of damage, save for the blades curling up a little. There was a notice board with information and photos from when the incident occurred, and a few past memorial services. A box was attached to the board consisting of the guest book and a few laminated pages with information. The bench I mentioned before served as the perfect place to read.
One of the pages was a dissertation by a reporter who had pieced together a tale to explain the puzzle of what an American mail carrier plane was doing in Sweden. And what a tale it was – a clandestine American Air Force operation to smuggle Norwegian resistance fighters to England via war-neutral Sweden under the guise of a mail carrier service to be trained in warfare. The missions were only flown in bad weather to avoid detection, and on this particular day the weather got bad enough to prove fatal.
You can read about the incident and see photos: Link
Sitting there on a clear sunny day, reading through the pages, I couldn’t help but imagine how it must have been like 81 years ago when the plane crashed in the middle of the night, not far from where I sat. The immersion only helped by the drone of a single propellor private plane flying by.
Having read my fill, I signed the guestbook and made my way back to the parking lot and eventually home.
It had been a wonderful day full of riding in nature and learning!
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