Tag: Sweden

STOCKHOLM

14 August

Reluctantly we left this camp – we could have stayed for a week relaxing, but summer is nearly over and the snow is not far around the corner so we need to keep moving.  We headed down to Ringerum and found Lloyds Aunt and Uncle in a very rural environment.  They have a large farm with a couple of houses on.  It was funny as we turned up like they were expecting us but after a bit of discussion we realised that although Lloyd had emailed them they had no idea we were calling past and didn’t know who we were when we pulled up in our campervan.  So funny but all good and we even got to meet Lloyds cousin Andrew (pronounced Andreas) who was doing one of the houses up and we may get to meet again down the track in Czech Republic in a few weeks time if our travel coincides with his visit.

We left the relatives and headed off for Stockholm as we thought we may as well try and head there for the night rather than waste another day travelling there.  It was about a 3hr journey and thankfully a little after peak hour Friday night traffic.  We arrived at the city camp right on the banks of the city river full of boats.  During the summer it is a hard stand for campervans only and during the winter they dock the boats here as the water may freeze.  We arrived about 8 and managed to get the last spot just 5 minutes prior to another camper pulling in and he missed out.  So so lucky – someone is looking out for us that is for sure.  The next campsite is a way out of the city and I hadn’t felt like trying to find it at that time of night.

We pulled up for the night and got an early start the next day.  It was Saturday, so definitely knew it would be busy in the city.  Stockholm had a Kulture festival on for the week so we were lucky to arrive at the end of it.  Saturday was the most spectacular day, not a cloud in the sky and the promise of mid 20 temperatures.  The camp didn’t have wifi, so another day without any connectivity to the world.  We biked the couple of kms into the edge of the old city to save our legs at the end of the day, parked the bikes up and walked around the old city.  I fell in love with this city.  I think Stockholm is my favourite city so far (but I can’t compare with Paris as that is a city that stands alone).  The buildings are adorable and the old city has narrow cobbled streets with quirky shops and cafes.  We ended up buying a little plaque off an eccentric man in an antique store who asked everyone who walked in where they were from and he played music on his piano from their country when they answered him.  In the short time we were in the store we met an Austrian couple whom we asked advice on parts of their country and then a Swiss couple that we did the same with.  Funny where you meet people you can get information from.  We saw a gorgeous painting that we wanted to buy of a snow scene with fairy tale animals.  Some would say a childs painting, but we both could have looked at the painting for hours it was so well done.  There were a few similar ones painted by a Russian artist who was coming very popular around the world, so the gallery owner told us (although we still can’t find the artists name online).  We walked away thinking about it as it was a very expensive painting but we knew we couldn’t keep it in the van and where was it to go if we had it posted somewhere.  We didn’t go back, but that painting will stay with us I think, a bit like the very colourful china cows we saw on the Spanish border that we didn’t buy a few years ago that we regretted, but the paintings were priced from about 16,000nok and the cows were only about 50euro so I don’t think I can compare here.

We saw the Kings palace amongst many other buildings.  The Queen Elizabeth cruise ship was in port along with another cruise ship and consequently there were many people on shore.  As we were walking around the harbourside Scot commented to this fellow about his Chihuahua dogs that he and his wife were walking and we ended up walking and talking with them and stopped and had a drink with them while they had lunch.  Henning and Sonniva (I hope I got the names correct) were a lovely couple who live in Stockholm not far from the café we were at.  Eventually we left them and headed to the Djurgarden area where the ferries come across from the town.  Lots of people sitting around in the sun in bikinis and shorts soaking up the sun.  We walked back to the town and stopped to find out what was happening on a big stage near the kings palace.  We got talking to a lady with a beagle named Helmet who told us the opera was on there that night.  Scot didn’t want to wait the time, but I figured why miss out on part of their music festival when it was for free.  We had some Indian street food and a drink and waited until it started.  There were a lot of people there listening to it.  There of course were no seats left and it was standing room only and no views for those of us who were vertically challenged.  We watched for a while but after walking so far today our legs and feet were aching so we headed away before it finished.  There was also the fact that we hadn’t put the lights we had bought on our bikes and the nights are getting shorter now – we only get light until about 9-9.30 instead of 11pm – shame.

We walked back through the old city and found our bikes and biked back to the camp.

Sunday 16 August

Up early, showered and off.  We were going to take a ferry trip out to the outer islands today, but ended up deciding that we would rather see more of the town and there was another concert on in the afternoon that may be great to listen to.  So we biked back to the old city and then right along the waterfront on the opposite side from the camp stand.  There are such cool buildings down this side and the bikeways were great and flat.  We went and left the bikes back where we did the previous day and walked again up through the old city.  You always seem to find streets you hadn’t seen the day before when you go back.  We stopped for a coffee at the cosy café where they had wifi.  We are very aware that a number of campsites close their doors in the countries we are about to visit around the middle of September.  So we wanted to have a look at a few of the countries we knew we had to visit.  Problem with this is it takes so much time to do this and we didn’t want to spend all day at the café, so this will have to wait a bit.  We are getting a wee bit concerned that we are going to come across countries where we may not find places to stay and we are not good at finding appropriate wild camping sites.  As we near eastern Europe camping outside a camping ground does not fill me with confidence and some countries do not allow it.  We just may have to fly through a few countries, like from Estonia through to Poland quite quickly so that we can see Austria and Switzerland before it becomes a difficult task and the snow comes.

Anyway back to Stockholm.  We headed off along the harbour to the garden where the concert was being held.  We didn’t arrive before it had started so came across a huge amount of people there when we arrived.  There would have been many thousands of people there also in part because it was such a beautiful day again.  The concert wasn’t opera this time, but the orchestra was playing again and the music was a little classical.

When it finished we walked back through town and we needed to find a place with wifi as I needed to book the ferry we need to take on Tuesday from Kapellskar to Naantali in Finland.  It is a vehicle ferry only and is much cheaper than taking one from Stockholm.  They even provide free meals on board which is great.  We stopped at a café and once most of the people had left that were there I went on and booked the ferry, but just as I finished Scot noticed some guy looking like he was watching us and smiling (I hadn’t noticed him walk in), so now I am worried that he may have been scanning the wifi information and may have obtained my credit card details along with dobs etc.  Maybe I sound like a major paranoid, but if I have to cancel my major credit card now we may as well pack up and leave Europe as it is our lifeline (Scot can’t use his as he can’t remember his pin).  So now I have to wait and see whether I am compromised.  And I am usually unbelievably careful with this stuff, but I had no choice.  We have not been able to get wifi for a week now and we couldn’t get on the ferry without booking a day in advance. Internet access has been impossible to get outside of café wifi.  For those who don’t know it is apparently quite easy to scan peoples information in open wifi situations from what I have read (haven’t done it myself).

Anyway, we biked back to the van with me freaking out.  We only have to travel up half an hour from Stockholm to where the ferries leave.  We overnight there and have to be at the dock at 7am ready to board.  We don’t arrive in Finland until 7pm so a long trip, but should be lovely if the weather is like it has been of late.

OSLO

The camp we stayed at called Rustberg Camping had several very tame rabbits in a cage.  I felt sorry for them as their base was a kind of dirt and stone and we hadn’t seen much grass in the time we were there and rabbits can eat grass almost all day.  So on the way to the showers I took some pieces of veges and as much grass as I could rip off for the poor things.

We decided to visit the Olympic bobsled at Hunderfossen before heading off to Oslo.  It looked a bit deserted but we went and had a look.  They were offering rides on a summer (or Cool Runnings) style bobsled on the snow track without the snow, so I told Scot he should have a go as they needed one more person.  They travel about 100kms/hr in the summer style one and about 120kms in the snow.  He had a go and enjoyed it, but said they got jolted around quite a bit and the big guy behind him was digging his elbows into his shins as you sit very intimately in the sled.  It something most people will never have a chance to do in their life so I thought it was a great thing to do (even if I wasn’t game to have a go).

We then headed off to Oslo.  It was a couple of hours drive and Oslo was very busy – as all cities are I guess – as we hit the highway.  The camp ground was right near the city and like all city campsites didn’t have great reviews but you stay there for a purpose and not for the great campsite.  It was really a huge paddock with electricity around the outside for vans and you just parked where ever you could find a spot.  We parked up beside the roadway which was fine.  I spied what I thought were dodgy people in the campsite.  Scot said I thought everyone was dodgy, but you get a feel for those that don’t seem kosher.  I have been told by others that we were lucky in Voss where the gypsies were camping that we hadn’t been ‘targeted’, so I don’t think it’s a bad thing.  Anyway I was back up at reception as the wifi was non existent after paying $10 for 24hr access and the dodgys were standing behind me when a lady came in and stood behind them.  She asked where they were from and one guy said they were ‘Esperanto – Gypsies’, it was funny the lady said ‘Oh’ and didn’t speak further.  In a typical camp ground everyone leaves their chairs, tables etc outside even when they go away for the day.  We have seen it in all camps including city camps we have stayed at, but at this camp not a soul left anything outside their vans which was very strange indeed.  But I figured it may have been due to the large number of gypsies living in this campsite.  There were a lot of them all camped together.

11 August

We bought a 24 hour bus pass the next morning and headed off into the city early.  Oslo had on a jazz festival so we had hoped we might get to see some free concerts in the town centre.  We walked around the town for a bit and found a bus that could take us out to an area that had a few museums.  We don’t normally do museums because they take so much time to see things and you don’t end up seeing much of anything else which is not ideal when you only have a day or so in a city.  But we did decide to have a look at the polar museum where Fridtjof Nansen, Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott’s North and South Pole adventures and the ship Fram was displayed.  They had preserved the ship and built the whole museum around it – really well done.  It was an excellent complete history of their polar expeditions and we both enjoyed it.  The only downside was a large group of young children who were visiting the museum were not being supervised and we had to put up with every one of about the 100 or so ringing the bell of the ship very loudly continuously for about an hour which was so annoying.

 

We caught the bus back to the city, but we had only gone about a km and the bus driver stopped the bus, turned off the engine and sat there.  No word, no nothing and we were all looking at each other wondering what was going on.  Then on the screen it said the bus was moving on in 45mins.  Eventually he said something in Norwegian which we realised meant we needed to leave and get another bus that was sitting near.  We walked around the fort area near the docks and then walked down to the main street where they were about to have a jazz session play.  We needed to try and get wifi access so we headed to a café for a coffee and thought we would head back to the jazz in a short while.  Unfortunately the jazz only played for a short time and we missed out.  They were packing up the stage when we walked back – we weren’t that long.  I was disappointed.  We had a walk around the city some more and took in some of the atmosphere before catching a bus back to the camp.  Oslo isn’t a very big city and there isn’t a lot of old buildings.  I can’t remember but I think we were told that Oslo was bombed in the war because the Germans used the Norwegians and most buildings were destroyed.  Only Bergen has all it’s old historic buildings still left.  The architecture of some of the modern city buildings is quite different and interesting in Oslo.

12 August

We left Norway the next day and headed back to Sweden.  In countries like Denmark, Norway, Sweden where they have their own currency it is really difficult to manage having some cash and leaving with none so that you have spent it all and you aren’t wasting any.  We normally buy groceries or a coffee or something if we have any money left over.  We stopped just inside the Norway border at a supermarket to buy some groceries, particularly some Salmon which is so cheap in Norway – about $20 a kilo.  The lady stuffed up though as I wanted to pay some cash and the balance on card, but she put the whole lot on card and I was still left with the 120nok, so we had coffee and pastries that we didn’t really want and it was quite awful too, so I was a bit cranky about that.

I am going to sum up my experience in Norway expense wise since there are so many people saying how terribly expensive it is.  We got told that the wages are high in Norway so prices don’t seem bad to citizens.  I don’t shop at the cheap shops as I have said before I like variety and fresh fruit and veges and I cant get this at Aldi style supermarkets.  Fresh veges and fruit is a good price – in fact on the whole generally cheaper than Australia even with the dreadful exchange rate we are getting.   Fish is ridiculously cheap and fresh.  Chicken is about twice our price and meat seemed to be comparable to Aus. Packet foods like rice, pasta, soup, biscuits, tea, chips etc  – not that we buy much is comparable to Australia prices. Bread appears to be expensive but you never see much of it so I don’t think it is part of their staple diet.  Alcohol is definitely very expensive (so don’t drink J) and so is chocolate – that’s sad.  We looked at the price of holiday houses in desirable areas near ski fields and they were quite reasonable.  These houses wouldn’t necessarily be for just holiday as they were near enough to places where there would be work.  There were houses for the equivalent of $40,000 and they went up from there.  Yes the $40,000 house wouldn’t be much, but if you look at what isn’t much in Aust then you will still be looking at a lot more than that near to towns.  The average would have been between $200,000 -$300,000.  I am sure if you looked in Oslo you would see prices closer to our high city prices though.  We saw cars in car yards and the prices were also about the same as what we would pay in Aus for second hand cars.  We saw plenty of clothes for 100 – 200 nok (15-30aud) which is about the same and you can pay equally larger amounts for designer clothing and shoes.  I don’t know a lot of the other prices, but on the whole I would say that Norway is not as expensive a city as people say, but is about on average no different to what we pay in Australia, but they definitely get paid more than we do based on what we have been told about the wages.  Norway has been the more expensive country we have visited which just proves to me how expensive Australia has become over the last few years.

I have to say though that I absolutely love the summer fruit season here – raspberries, blueberries and strawberries are so cheap.  I am paying about $5 for a huge punnet of raspberries – would cost me about $50 for the same amount in Aus (and yes I used to buy them), so I am enjoying them everyday, so yummy.

On to Sweden.  We were heading over to Ringerum which is just south of Soderkoping (pronounced Sodershopping) to call in on Lloyd’s family (I work with Lloyd) before we head up to Stockholm.  It is a long journey right across Sweden so after 6 hours on the road we saw a sign on the side of the road for a campsite so we headed off the highway for the night.  We found this lovely little camp ground right on a lake front and it had a beach and walkways around an area so that kids could swim safely.  It was a lovely hot day so when we arrived we decided we had to go for a swim.  It is often hottest about 5pm.  The swim was welcome and the lake temp was about 22deg so was just lovely.   No wifi at this place and nothing to concentrate on other than relaxing and reading.  We loved the lake environment so much we decided we needed to stop driving for at least one more day so stayed on the next day.  We had a few swims out to the little island just off the beach and sat in the sun reading.  We did get a bit burnt though as we hadn’t realised just how long we had been sitting in the sun.  They had yummy ice creams which we enjoyed late in the day.  What I like most about here is the fact that there were young and old bulgy bouncy ladies in bikinis who had no hangups about their size or age.  I felt much better and wished I had bought a bikini top and not just the long two piece I bought for 3 euro in Coevorden, Netherlands.  (This was from a shop that had a sale on and I wasn’t sure I would wear the two, two pieces I bought but who can turn down 1.50euro per piece for bathers! Glad I now did.)

SOUTHERN SWEDEN

We wake early and Scot has been saying for weeks and weeks that he should get up and have a run in the morning.  Well, this is the morning it happens.  I am amazed, but I did prompt him this morning as it is a pleasant morning and it is a good area to run around.  Off he goes and returns about half an hour later and then decides to jump in for a swim as the water really doesn’t feel that cold.  I would have joined him but I can’t stomach water that has weed in it, and this place has the bottom covered in weed – not something I can bear.  We get ready and take off for a trip around the bottom of Sweden where we want to end up around Malmo.  It starts to rain again, which has been the case each day we have been in Sweden so far.  We travelled west and drove through Kristianstad, Horby and down to Ystad and took the coast road through little villages.  The countryside as we travelled through this part of the country has changed to be a lot more like Denmark with lots of grain, potatoes, corn and other crops being grown and not so many forests.  It was a dreadfully windy day and as I drove, the van was being blown around on the road quite a bit.  I could have a bitch about the older slow Volvo driver around the bottom off Sweden I got stuck behind, but it was actually a Renault driver….haha.  It was actually quite slow going around the bottom as the speed it mostly 40km/hr with lots of speed bumps.  The top side along here was that the houses were very quaint with lovely gardens and lots of colour.  Obviously difficult to achieve by the beach but a lot of effort had been put in by most who lived there.

We stopped for the night at Habo Ljung which is just above Malmo and on the coast from Lund.  We did want to stop at Malmo and have a look around, but we felt that there wasn’t enough time to do all that we want to and the scenery around this area was the most important part.  The camping ground at Habo was very full and was right on the water front.  We had a problem with their electricity points not being the standard ones which we have only encountered once before in Belgium, but they said to have a look around as there were other styles as well.  We ended up parking up beside another GB campervan (Great Britain) which would be the first one we have seen since Luxembourg.  The couple who owned it had a lovely retriever called Oscar who was quite adorable.  Bill was English and Margrit was Finnish and they were on their way back from a long holiday in Finland.  I am sure the universe put us beside them on purpose as we had moved from another spot.  We got some great advice about the ferry we need to take from Sweden to Finland which will save us money and also on the areas in Finland that are best to have a look at.  It seems we always get put near campers we can gain knowledge from for our onward journey which has been just fantastic.

We went for a walk along the beach front and out on the jetty.  The water was very shallow for a very long way out.  There was a lot of very smelly weed along the beach and everywhere in the shallow water.  They had piled a lot of the weed up to obviously move it away.  The dreadful part about the weed was it had a horrid pinkish colour and looked a bit like an oil slick had gone through without the oil.  We wondered if it was a result of algae bloom which Denmark has also been having a problem with.  It didn’t look safe to swim in close to the shore and the stench of it would put you off anyway.  A great shame if they have a problem here as there aren’t a lot of places they can swim and this looked like it would be a popular place to swim.  Along the shoreline of the south there are a lot of rocks and no easy access to the shore so any beach must be valuable to the residents.  Another thing was the lack of any sign of fish anywhere of any size along the length of the jetty.  Usually you would see some small bait fish.  Our fishing friend Mick would have been very disappointed with this area – actually he would be quite disappointed by the lack of fish in most places we have been, except at Karlskrona where they did fishing excursions.

I like the way they charge for laundry here – 40sek for 3 hours to use the laundry and you can get as many loads as you need to done which ends up very inexpensive as opposed to Netherlands where we paid 8Euro for one load.  That is the difference between $8 and $24.  This is the worst campground we have been in for facilities.  There are 4 toilets between about 200 or more campers and there was always a queue to go in.  They were unisex so you can imagine the state they were in with that many people using them. The showers were the same in the morning.  I am really un-impressed about this aspect.  The wifi was equally shitty- only available at the café, so you had to sit in a seat outside it to get any connectivity and even with only 3 or 4 people on it, it was slow as.  It makes it hard when we are trying to keep in touch with everyone and a lot of our time each night needs to be spent having a look at roads we will take the next day, where we will stay, how far we will travel, what there is to look at in areas coming up which all takes a lot of time, so I get really frustrated with it at times.  Facebook is the hardest.  You can sometimes look, but you can’t even like anything because you have not got enough reception.

It was finally my turn to cook which I did – instead of going out.  I made a great pasta dish which proves I can actually cook, I am just not fussed on it. Scot did enjoy his night off for July….lol.  I would have done the dishes but I was too busy doing the clothes washing :-).

Tuesday 28 july

We travelled from Habo and went up towards Gothenburg on the highway.  We had a lot of ground to cover so the highway was really the only way to go.  We stopped at McDonalds for a coffee as the other roadhouse’s coffee is just dreadful and at least McDonalds is bearable.  I was shocked at the price of burgers here, not that I know how much they are in Australia as I have never bought one.  But they were charging 70sek ($12aud) for a Big Mac and one with chicken – no idea what it was called was the equivalent of about $11.  I can’t imagine they would sell any in Aus if they were this price, but I have no idea really.

We got to Gothenburg and decided that it would be a nice place to see a little of as we had heard it was quite a cool city.  We drove to a camping ground (Scot navigated perfectly) that is very near to the tram, but for the first time since being in Europe we were told they were full.  Wow, we have never had to try an alternate ground, so we went to another one which was like a huge dirt carpark and it was a long way to the tram – up a huge hill.  So we went to another holding stand that is only for Motorhomes and was owned by the original camp we visited.  It has power and security driving by occasionally but nothing else.  This was fine for us as we could walk 10 minutes to the tram going into Gothenburg.  We got in for free as even though I asked how to get a ticket from the driver, my card didn’t work – or I was doing something wrong.  Very embarrassing actually in front of the entire carriage watching me not able to figure it out.  Anyway we got off in pouring rain (which had been off and on all day) and found the tourist centre to get a map and work out what we wanted to go and see in the short time we had.  We wandered around, under a newly bought umbrella as ours is somewhere in Malilla or in someone else’s van 🙂  It was quite a busy and cute city and we were a little disappointed we couldn’t do it justice, but time is of the essence and we saw as much as we could.  They have an amazing sailing ship out on the port which we went to have a look at, but it is a permanent feature there as a hotel/restaurant.  I could imagine it in its sailing days would have been incredibly spectacular with its sails up.  Gothenburg has many cafes and pubs unlike a few of the other places we have seen and reckon it would be a neat place to party.  It is a university town though, so this may be why.  We sat out one huge downpour in a café having coffee, hot chocolate and muffins and used the wifi since we have none at the campsite, but the rain wasn’t stopping any time soon by the look of it.

It was going to be too much of a hassle to keep looking around in the rain so we decided just to head back to the van and relax.  We didn’t really go with our wet weather gear on, but should have guessed it was the thing to do after rain every day, so we didn’t really want to get saturated trying to see anything more.

VAXJO, MALILLA SPEEDWAY, KARLSKRONA SWEDEN

One thing we forgot to put about Copenhagen: In the city there was road works everywhere we turned, but this was ok as it seemed they were making a concentrated effort to improve the roads and squares which was great to see.

I want to reply to Di’s comment, each persons experience with a city is always different, I don’t think you had rose coloured glasses at all. It always depends on the weather, the people around you, the time of the year and how you are feeling. We liked Copenhagen – it is a lovely city, there were just some things we hthought were a little ordinary to us. I remember sitting in Amsterdam having our very expensive beer and looking at all the rubbish lying everywhere, but we watched guys cleaning it up. Unfortunately you cant stop people dropping their rubbish and butts everywhere but you can make an effort to clean it up every day. In the Haven in Copenhagen the rubbish, broken glass, butts etc had been there for a while which was such a shame, it wouldn’t have taken much to clean.

We drove up to Helsingor and stopped up for half an hour and had a nice coffee and cake in the small busy village.  If we had had a bit more time this would have been a lovely place to spend a little more time.  People were from all over I think, who were either going on the ferry or had come over on the ferry.

We drove down to the ferry and managed to get on an earlier one than we had booked.  The crossing was only 20 minutes which wasn’t even enough time for Scot to have a drink!  He was disappointed.  They were selling lots of alcohol on the ferry I guess because it is harder to get in Sweden.  In fact we haven’t even seen a place that you can buy it yet, except one supermarket but that only had low alcohol beer and cider – not quite what Scot wanted!  The drink on the ferry wasn’t that expensive at all – in fact quite a bit cheaper than Australia.

Off the ferry we drove and would you believe it we turned on the radio and Abba was singing, welcoming us to Sweden. We headed up North East towards Vaxjo which was on the way to the Speedway.  As I had been told there are lots and lots of spruce forests and they line the roads we travelled on.  There are pretty lakes all over which seem to have most camp grounds located on them.  We stopped for the night at Evedal which is just out of Vaxjo and right on a large lake.  They had a great area for swimming and even had 3 diving platforms up to 10m but when you dived in you couldn’t see what was under the water so it looked quite dodgy and would have been a leap of faith that no rocks or branches were hidden.  Even Scot was unsure of diving there but it was a bit cold and late when we arrived.  I wish I wasn’t quite such a wuss with the cold otherwise I would have had a great swim there.  The campground was like Copenhagen – not enough facilities for everyone there so we had to queue up for a shower in the morning.

We went for a walk in the morning around the lake edge and one older man was in the water having a bath in the lake with his soap – maybe he didn’t want to wait in the queue (the far queue…haha).

When we arrived at this campsite they wouldn’t let us in to start with as we couldn’t find our camping card we had bought when arriving in Denmark.  We realised the buggar in Copenhagen hadn’t given us our card back when we left, so we had to pay 150sek for another one.  They are expensive and you can’t camp in Scandinavia without one.  They want to keep a track of you wherever you go here.

Scot was chaffing at the bit to get going as he didn’t want to miss out on the speedway.  We hadn’t been able to buy tickets as it wouldn’t accept our credit card, which we found out the reason why  and it was because our ip address for the computer was from a different country to our credit card.  Which pretty much puts any tourist out of the picture as far as tickets go.  Anyway I wanted to try to catch up on some emails as we were early and we had good free wifi for once so we left late in the morning.  The road wasn’t busy as it hadn’t really been the day before, but it started to rain on the way.  It didn’t just rain but it poured.  We started to wonder if it would be cancelled.

When we arrived in Malilla we decided to go straight to the track and check it out for parking for the night etc.  The guys on the gate wanted to charge us an extra 200sek if we weren’t going to leave the park after the race but they said we could go camp down the road.  There was a huge field that was starting to get filled with hundreds of campervans, caravans and tents.  So we decided we would park up there and walk down to the track when the ticket office opened.

The rain kept coming and coming and coming.  The guys on the gate said the rain was due to stop at 5 so it would be all ok.  We still bought our tickets knowing that if it was cancelled they weren’t going to refund anyone although they would have tried to run it the next day first.  The seats we wanted had of course gone, but in the end it didn’t matter when we saw the track, there weren’t really any bad seats.

By the time we walked down as the gates were open, the driveway to the field was a muddy quagmire and the grass was soppy and mushy.  The rain had stopped and the air was light misty foggy and damp, but at least not raining.  There would have been about 10,000 people there, but the stadium takes about 15,000.  The rain would have kept a lot away which is a shame.  The alcohol being served was all light and the only food they served was hotdogs, pizza, licorice and lollies.  Strange combination.

It is still the middle of summer here so I am wondering why we are wearing: long johns, two woollen singlets, T-shirts, jumpers, rain coats, scarves, boots, woollen socks and carrying gloves and hat!

The 16 world class riders were from all over, but there were 3 Aussies in there – Troy Bachelor (from Brisbane), Chris Holder and Jason Doyle.  We have seen them race at north Brisbane.  They did really well, Doyle and Holder were in the semi-finals but unfortunately didn’t make the final which is a shame.  It was a great race and for Scot definitely worth the detour to get there, it was a tick off his bucket list and now he can’t wait for the Isle of Mann.  They did take quite a while to get the track right after all the rain but they had covered it up while it was raining so it didn’t get saturated.  We did cheer for the Aussie riders so did our bit to help them along and there were two other Aussie flags in the audience that we saw J.  One guy yelled out Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, but by the time I realised he had done that it was too late to go Oy, Oy, Oy.

Walking back to our van at the end of the night, the walkways were muddy wet messes.  I had worried that we may get stuck trying to get out in the van in the morning but we were ok.

They must have partied on till all hours at the track as we could hear the music from the van.  I’m not sure how much partying can be done on light beer though?

We lost our umbrella there as we weren’t allowed to take them in but Scot scored a program left behind by someone so I guess it was even.

We got up reasonably early in the morning as I didn’t want to be the last one out in case we got stuck.  The grounds were a quagmire of mud and puddles but most people were ok.  I only saw people pushing one van out of a rut.

Sunday 26th July

We leave Malilla and head down the coast on our way around to Norway.  We intend to travel the coast around the bottom of Sweden as it is meant to be the prettiest part of the country.  We aren’t sure what we will see as we head up to Gothenburg.  We travelled down to a lovely area with lots of little islands and bays and a large port called Karlskrona.  On the way down the tree lined roads thinned to more fields and hills and some forests.  Makes a change from nothing but forest on all sides.  We feel that Sweden’s main income is probably timber – funny that.  Of course Volvo is also a big industry as they are everywhere – but you can’t complain about the Volvo driver in front as they  aren’t old men in hats….lol.

We are staying in a camping ground that is quite huge with lots of wild areas and water front sites as it is on a peninsula. There are a lot of kids around this campsite everywhere and as much as it’s nice to see the kids having fun, I will be glad when they go back to school in a week’s time for a little peace at night.  Since it doesn’t get dark until about 11pm, they don’t go to bed very early and you can still hear them when we go to bed ourselves.  Scot calls me a bar-humbug, but I think there is a time that children need to quieten down for those who like to sleep earlyish.