Monday 23rd, Tuesday 24th, Wednesday 25th June 2014.
Three days disappeared in a fog of MAN COLD misery. Three days in which we did nothing and went nowhere. Three days of total misery.
Thursday 26th June 2014.
We moved today. Another day recovering should have happened but having seen and done all we wanted to in Copenhagen we were keen to get on.
The day didn’t start well, I couldn’t get the motor mover to work properly, it seems to be a bad connection somewhere inside the remote control, which if it becomes totally inoperable will potentially give us big problems. The last two sites for instance would have been impossible without it.
We should have moved on Monday, we were going to move to a country neither of us have visited before, Sweden. The easiest way to get from Denmark to Sweden is via the Øresund Bridge, which starts as a tunnel till its under the Danish shipping lanes then rises from the ground to pass over the Swedish shipping lanes as a suspension bridge. The whole crossing is around 20km long and cost us an eye watering DKK 730 (£78.49) for a one way crossing.
The countryside as we passed was pleasant but uninspiring, unless you are turned on by fir tree plantations which lined either side of largely empty roads. I set the cruise control to the legal limit of 80kph as we left the bridge toll booth and took it off over 300km later just one kilometre from where we are camping. During that journey probably not more than a dozen or so heavy lorries crept past us and we overtook just three vehicles in the whole trip. Sadly the weather which has been mainly good to brilliant since we arrived in Scandinavia has taken a turn for the worst. It has rained almost continuously since we set off this morning and the forecast is for more for some days to come.
The site, Vätterledens Camping which although large, is more of a Caravan Club CL than what we have become used to in our two previous Scandinavian sites. Our pitch does have an uninterrupted view over the lake and wild harebells grow amongst the undergrowth.
Friday 27th June 2014.
The sky although cloudy showed an amount of blue this morning so we were able to sit outside the owners house and use their t’internet to sort the finances, we set up a payment for my credit card to be cleared on Sunday and after completing it discovered it will not be credited till Tuesday so that will attract a £12 late payment fine. Talking of credit cards we had a problem towards the end of our last trip when our bank wrote to us to say that in a spirit of openness the foreign transaction charges that “were always included” would now be shown separately on our statements. It is strange that although the “existing charges” were now clearly shown separately the main cost did not reduce, the cost of withdrawing our money increased by 2.5% and we were paying £12 a month charges for an account that gave special privileges e.g. RAC membership - useless in mainland Europe, travel insurance valid for two weeks holiday a year and, the only thing of interest to us cost free foreign money transactions, and cash withdrawals. We spent a long time researching the best way forward and finally finished up closing the old account and opening a new Halifax Reward account which pays us £5 per month and a Halifax Clarity credit card that charges no fees for foreign transactions or cash withdrawals but does of course charge interest from the moment cash is withdrawn at 12.9% APR. We get around this by buying everything on the credit card and when we need cash we again draw it on the card but as soon as the withdrawal appears on the statement the card gets repaid in full. So far it’s worked well cos we have had reasonable t’internet access.
Saturday 28th June 2014.
Still feeling like death warmed over today. I can't believe that even a MAN COLD could last quite this long so it must be MAN FLU and how long is that going to last? We did go for a drive into town to have a nose around and get a few necessities like beer and wine. The town here is very much a small seaside town with many shops making and selling the local speciality of peppermint rock and two small supermarkets neither of which seemed to stock wine, spirits or any half decent beer. Chatting to the checkout girl she explained that only the government shops could sell wine, spirits or strong beer ordinary shops could only sell low strength beer. We hurried round to the Systembolaget, the state owned liquor store, only to find that its opening hours were Monday to Friday 10.00am till 6.00pm and Saturday 10.00am till 2.00pm. It was 3.00pm. Oh bugger! a teetotal weekend.
Sunday 29th June 2014.
Moving day. Don’t quite know why as we have been no where and done nothing since we arrived here but still had no desire to stay. We moved north and east and are now about 150 km north of Stockholm. The scenery didn’t unfortunately improve very much, we drove mile after through rather dull fir tree plantations although the roads themselves were interesting. Many of the roads here are three lanes wide, this being a super democracy each direction takes equal turns in being first the dual carriageway and then the single carriageway. Not that it makes much difference. We had set the cruise control to the regulation 80kph within 5 minutes of setting off this morning it was on virtually all the way and very little overtook us and we overtook absolutely nothing. The site we are staying on is again small and family run, right on the edge of a lake and miles from anywhere.
Heres hoping next week is better than this one.