Wednesday, 01 Jul
With a successful morning routine completed by 7.15am we
were off for a 7.30am service for Springy. Things came to an abrupt stop when
we realised the gates to the camping site were locked until 8am. Bugger.
Luckily, someone opened them at 7.45 and we were off!
After a successful service, we crossed over to Sweden by
tunnel and bridge. Once into the land of horned Vikings, Abba and Ikea we
headed north, our first stop was…. Ikea! Not surpringly to me, it looked just
like the Ikeas in Australia, much to the disappointment of Dee.
The end of our travelling day was in the city
of Halstad. A very nice place with cobble stoned streets in the central market
area and very little signage that I shouldn’t be driving there. After
accidentally finding the town’s information office (no signage or street signs
and only found because we were window shopping and it looked like an
information place) we did some basic grocery shopping, Dee bought another pair
of pants and I bought myself one of those vests with a hundred pockets (well, a
dozen) so I can be an intrepid explorer and carry stuff without lugging around
my backpack everywhere.
I think I’m trying to become the stereotypical foreign
tourist………
Sweden felt so different. I didn’t expect the flatness, the
wheat fields or the clear blue sky that just seemed to stretch on. Maybe I was
expecting the fjords straight up. It also was wonderfully warm without being
too much so. It must be a recent change of weather though as we saw enough
people looking lobster red by the end of the day. As we are a pale blue family
almost pathologically afraid of the sun, we found it amazing, almost shocked,
by the lack of sun safety by most of the people we saw.
We finally found our place for the night, even with the
hindrance of the local map provided by the ‘Where’s Wally’ information Office.
It’s a beautiful stony beach actively used by the locals with views to Denmark
and the North Sea.
Thursday, 02 Jul
With clear day and non-early start, I went for a short
walk/run and finished off with a 100 situps and a few pushups. The girls were
so impressed they joined in and did a few situps themselves, just to prove to
me they could.
One thing that is seriously lacking in Europe is the lack of
op / charity shops and Dee has been showing severe withdrawal symptoms. In the
UK you could find 4-5 in the main streets of any town. As I was driving through
one town looking for a place to have morning tea, I saw the red cross and a
large banner proclaiming it to be a second hand shop. We quickly changed plans
for morning tea and headed in. Unfortunately, we were early by 20 minutes, so
we had a coffee and biscuit and waited. Well, I did anyway. Dee was anxious,
making plans to finish her coffee later as she saw people entering the building
before the official time. Someone may be buying THAT THING that she was
destined to buy. There were other people waiting outside, circling, circling,
waiting for the first drop of blood to hit the water to trigger an uncontrollable
feeding frenzy. Well, that’s what it looked like to me anyway. It must be
pension day or something as there were quite a few elderly shoppers eyeing each
other off, making sure they have a good position. The workers brought out a
rack of clothes and a trolley of books, hoping to sate the mob’s desire but I
think it had the opposite effect. We did walk out with a few nice things and
Dee was riding high on a wave of purchasing pleasure without having to worry
about buyer’s guilt.
We’ve stopped for the night at the town of Henan on the
island of Orust. We’re staying in the town’s yacht club’s car park. There were
already half a dozen camper vans by the time we arrived, the owners already in
deck chairs soaking up the sun, their hard, wrinkled skin browning and becoming
more corrugated. Not a smiling face amongst these miserable bastards. We went
for a walk to get some cash, look at craft shops and finding a library that had
free internet.
Ever since I started Dark Age re-enacting I’ve had numerous people
ask me if it’s because of my Swedish heritage. The funny thing is that I’m
Irish/Cornish and unless something happened one night with one of my many
grandmothers down through the ages, I don’t knowingly have any Swedish blood.
Now that I’m in Sweden, the Swedish don’t believe I’m not Swedish…….. And when
I speak to them, they don’t believe I’m Australian because I’m too well spoken.
Off to Oslo tomorrow to see fjords and some Viking stuff.
Friday, 03 Jul
After annoying the owners of the yacht club by parking during
the ‘night’ near a 3 point power point (because we have one) and not near the 5
point power points (because we don’t) as the guy who took our parking money
said it was OK, we started preparing for our drive to Oslo.
The fridge started to tick after I came back from PT which
is a good indication the gas bottle is now empty. I hooked up the second bottle
so everything is fine for the next 2-3 weeks. The problem we now have is we can’t
‘swap and go’ the gas bottles as Calgor gas only supplies to the UK and not to
Europe. We were told this wasn’t the case when we first entered into the
contract with them but you can’t easily get gas anywhere else in the UK now. I’m
hoping to find a gas company that is willing to fill our bottle instead of
having to buy a European one. Not only is this a cost issue but we have to
figure out where to store the third empty bottle.
We noticed that Springy was making those weird lurching
actions when accelerating again, so we pulled over and replaced the fuel filter
(man card stamped) with the spare we bought when we replaced the original
filter. We must have picked up a cruddy tank of fuel in the previous afternoon.
A side visit in Stockholm next week may be on the cards to get a few more spare
filters.
Morning tea was at a Rastaplaz / Information area where they
found a whale’s skeleton up on the top of a hill. They believe it was over
14,000 years old and the sea level was about 90m above where we were. There
must have been some serious geological activity occurring to raise the ocean
floor that high (or some Noah induced flood action).
We lunched in the car park of the University of Oslo as a
Wikipedia search (if it’s good enough for politicians…) said 3 Viking ships
were on display there. It was actually 15 minutes down the road…
The Viking Skips Huset in Oslo was amazing. It houses 3 found
funeral Viking ships with many of their items found with them, such as carts,
cooking equipment and chests. Again, this is the original artifacts that I’ve
read in books or seen on the internet.
We’ll have another quick look around Oslo tomorrow and head
east towards Stockholm, hopefully being there by Monday afternoon.
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