We waited for a Swedish train to go by so that we could see what that was like, then did a bit of food shopping and bought diesel. We visited the Tourist Office to use their Internet - what a laugh - Windows 7 in Swedish!! Took me ages to work out where my memory stick stuff was hidden. Anyway, we managed to answer some emails and decided to leave photos for another day. Back for a late lunch, then it clouded over and started to rain again.
Sat/Sun 29th/30th May - What a washout of a weekend! We had intended leaving Almhult and driving over to Oland on Saturday, but as it had rained most of the night and was still raining when we should have been packing up, we decided to stay put. I spent quite a time in Reception trying to translate for a French lady, via my English, to the Swedish receptionist who was having a problem with the number of days the French had stayed! My hand signals are getting better every day. We even went to the restaurant again for dinner and then the sun came out and it was a beautiful evening with a red sunset (which seems to mean nothing here)
Luckily it was still dry on Sunday morning so we were on the road by about 11.00am for a leisurely 127 miles over to the island of Oland. We arrived at Ekerum’s Camping (5*****’s in the book) about 2.15, only to find they were closed for the rest of the day!! After a bit of faffing around we found some little wooden boxes marked ‘drop-in plaatses’ with envelopes containing keys and pitch numbers. My best Swedish gave us to understand that we could just go and pitch up on one of these spaces, so we did, and hoped for the best.
Mon 31st May - We were up and breakfasted and over to the office by the time they were open at 9.00am and booked in properly, luckily we had chosen a pitch we could stay on “for as long as we liked”. It is a very large site with hundreds of chalets, cottages, mobile homes, tent area, seasonal caravans and us, but in a very handy location. By mid-morning it was raining again! We have come to the conclusion that ’him upstairs’ thinks that if we have had a nice day, it has to be followed by an awful one. It is now 8.25pm, 18’C in the camper with the heating on and STILL RAINING. We did go out this afternoon to a museum about 10 miles away. There were some very good textile exhibits there, but the rest of it was like a farmstead in 1700/1800, which was very interesting but needless to say most of it outside, so we only walked around until we got frozen and soaked, then made our way back in our nice warm car. We have got wi-fi here on the site, so I have bought a one-day card and will try to update the blog and photos tomorrow evening.
Tues 1st June - Well, at least it has stopped raining, still very windy though and cold. Today has been ‘castle’ day - we drove about 15km up the island to Borgholm and spent about 3 hours wandering around the old castle which was built as a summer palace in the 1600’s, renovated umpteen times since, had a fire, and is now used for concerts, banquets etc., rather like Leeds Castle.
As you know, us ‘oldies’ are at their happiest in ‘old’ places. After a picnic lunch (in the car out of the wind) we meandered a few hundred metres over to the ‘new’ castle called Solliden. This is the summer palace used by the current royal family and the gardens are open to the public at a vast fee of £7.00 each, so we decided we had walked enough and gave that one a miss. Drove on in to the town of Borgholm itself, but there was not a lot to see there so came back to the campsite for a windy walk on the beach. We have lost our Danish cuckoos, but are now being serenaded by a bird who sounds like a croaking frog. There are also some funny little birds who find it amusing to walk and hop along the path a few feet in front of us, but never really getting out of the way.
We also had one who came in under the camper in to the awning, only to scare the living daylights out of me when I opened up to go in.
We now have 1 Dutch family in a caravan, 1 Dutch family in a tent, 1 Swiss VW camper and us…all on 400+ touring pitches. Obviously their summer season has not yet started, but judging by the weather we have had I am not surprised. I wish we had brought our wellies, I now am reduced to my walking boots as my shoes and trainers are still drying out!
Weds 2nd June - At last summer seems to have arrived, it has been a beautiful day. We set off about 10.00am to go to the “Norre Udde” which is the northernmost tip of the island of Oland, where there is a lighthouse called Long Erik. We were able to walk around the point and stood watching a mummy duck teaching her babies to dive, very amusing. We also bumped in to another English couple who we had previously met at the last campsite we stayed at, what a small world! Oland itself is about 137 miles long but only 18 miles wide. It is made up mainly of heathland and beaches, but very pretty. There are still lots of the old windmills to be seen - we thought that they were rather small until we found out that they were used for polishing limestones for flagstones. They work something like a water-wheel you see in hot countries where oxen walk round and round, except that the mills have a grinding stone attached to the end of the long pole which goes around a circle of about 40 lime stones and polishes them.
We are staying half-way up the island roughly where the bridge comes over from the mainland, so did a circuit of the top half of the island. The sun shone all day, we were in T-shirts!!!!!!!!!! We found a few little villages to have a look around and even had lunch in a pub - they do a very good set daily lunch menu here in Sweden (£17.00 for 2 main meals, side salads, cokes and coffees.) So we only did toast for tea in the evening. We are getting lazy.
Thurs 3rd June - Decided to have a lazier day today, so did some washing first and used the broom…..then sat in the sun for a read. After lunch we went for a walk along the seashore path for about 2 hours. Lots of beautiful different types of wildflowers everywhere, swans in the water and birds all around. After dinner we had quite a long chat with the Danish couple that are here, as they seem to know quite a bit about Sweden and Norway. Then we got the maps out and started to plan our return journey, as we have now reached our furthest point and are half-way through the trip. We shall probably leave here on Sunday and set off back towards Denmark again.
Fri 4th June - Another beautiful day - we drove about 50 miles to “Sodra Udde” which is the southernmost point of the island, where there is a lighthouse called Long John (apparently the tallest lighthouse in Sweden).
We stopped a few times along the way to look at windmills, long barrows and pretty villages. We also bumped in to our English acquaintances yet again at one of the windmill stops. They are doing a similar trip to us, but in a small motor camper, so they stop every few nights in a different place. At the Sodra Udde there is a large bird reserve with hides to watch from and nesting boxes up everywhere, as well as lots of people with long-lensed cameras and binoculars. We were able to see seals sunning themselves on the rocks in the sea. Although it was sunny, there was still a very chilly wind so we had to put our jackets on again. On the return journey, through smaller country roads, we came across a place called Eketorps Borg, where they have excavated and rebuilt an Iron Age Fort, so we stopped to have a look around there. It was quite interesting and very well done, you could easily see how people lived in those times. We got back to base about 5.00pm to have dinner in the sun and found that we had been invaded by a lot of the seasonal caravanners come just for the weekend, so it is not so quiet now.
No comments:
Post a Comment