Viking Stone Ship

Ales Stenar (Ale’s Stones) is our first Viking Stone Ship – an amazing construction of 59 standing stones laid out in the shape a ship. It is thought that these ancient monuments were erected between 500 and 1000 CE although it is also thought that the construction incorporates stones from earlier Stone and Bronze Age monuments previously on the site. It seems that the stones are aligned on the winter and summer solstice sun rises and, rather like Stone Henge it can be used as an astrological calendar. Located high on the cliffs above the Baltic Sea it is simply beautiful in the afternoon sun - even with people climbing all over the stones.

a quartz stone at each end

port side

rather a big one

we saw a face in this one

Tonight we are in Ystad, a port town with an interesting medieval old town section. The official aire was packed, dusty and near a factory so we headed on up the road and found a beachside carpark with a few vans parked up so here we are at yet another free site.

Pine Trees and Rocky Outcrops

The campsites in the South of Sweden are packed to the gunnels with motorhomes, caravans and tents of all shapes and sizes which make them less than appealing to us but we had thought this would be the case during the summer holidays especially as the weather is so lovely. Luckily Scandinavia has a wonderful, friendly attitude to motorhoming which means that there is always somewhere nice to stay and usually at no charge. We can get water from churchyards or at the latrine emptying sites along the motorways.

excuse the shoes

Last night we stayed in a small grove of tall pine trees that is the official car park for a nature reserve called Tosteberga ängar near Langdon on the South West coast of Sweden. This is one of the many official, listed, motorhome aires in which visitors are welcome to ‘wild camp’.

cows cut off by the tide

lovely stones

There was only one other van over-nighting on the site. A marked trail from our lovely, temporary home took us over beautiful meadows and fields that were slowly being claimed by the sea. Rock boulders formed islands on which some cattle had been cut of by the spring tide. This delighted Kerriann who thinks that all farm animals are potential killers who will stalk and attack her as revenge for her carnivorous diet, but with the cattle safely contained on the island we could witness the amazing birdlife and nature’s displays of wild flowers unhindered.

This was one of our favourite motorhome stopovers and all free of charge.

Baltic Song Contest

When the otherwise staid Swedish audience leapt from their seats to dance to Stashka's fantastic song 'Chce kochac / I Want To Love' I had a feeling she would be the winner. She cleverly enlisted the assistance of some of the local schoolboys to add their rousing marching band drums to the song - inspired! If you haven't heard it - give it a listen on this link.

Strangely, second and third place were taken by Sweden who had two entries Alien (3rd) - and Caroline Wennergren (2nd). They were both excellent but our favourites were Miss 600 from the UK who received a somewhat frosty reaction from the audience (she followed Stashka) and Lithuania's 'The Ball and Chain' who had a very upbeat dance number. It's a shame England is not massively popular in Europe as we hoped Miss 600 would be in with a chance.

Here is link if you'd like to check out the line up.

The whole thing was being televised in Poland so we're hoping we appeared on Polish television - we were just underneath the swinging camera and smiled excitedly every time it pointed in our direction so we can only hope that fame will follow.

We had a great time in Karlshamn and would recommend the Baltic Festival if you're in the area in mid July.

Bandaloca - German drummers - fantastiche!!

We're currently in the middle of a nature reserve and I'm most surprised that we can get wee fee as we are near nothing except trees and a beach. Mr Fluffy has just returned from a walk where he forgot to spray on his 'Man-So-Hard' and is covered in midge bites. I elected to stay in and do the blog....hurrah for bite-free me.

Rune stone

Rokstenen

it's quite a big one

On our way down to Jonkoping we stopped off at a rather massive rune stone in the grounds of a church. It's known as Rokstenen and has the world's longest rune inscription. It's located between Granna and Motala near Lake Vatten and for more information click on this link .

Heda church wall

in Heda church wall

Nearby was the lovely Heda Church which has a beautiful Madonna statue and two massive rune stones placed in the external walls.

bit of a dark photo but she really is lovely

Karlshamn

hideous clown alert

After a night in Jönköping we decided it was time to head back to the coast so after stopping at a couple of pretty but boring aires at lakes we discovered Karlshamn, which just happens to be having its Baltic Festival this week. Hoorah! Whilst it's lovely being in Dickie it can get a bit samey so it's great when something excitingly out of the ordinary pops up.

jealousy of pert buttocks alert

The whole town of Karlshamn is taken over by free music, stalls and a parade (which featured my least favourite thing in the world...clowns).  Graham particularly enjoyed the Brazilian dancing girls with the pertest buttocks in the world. The highlight is the Baltic Song Contest which had some rather less-than-Baltic entrants like Spain and England but it was great fun and not quite as camp as Eurovision. Our favourites were Miss600 from England and the Lithuanianan entrant whose name escapes us, and the conductor from Poland wore a particularly lovely red crushed velvet jacket. The parade also featured a group from Uruguay, which, last time I looked, was no where near the Baltic Sea. There were line dancers, dancing monks,

slightly more modest than the Brazilians

and a group of cross dressing actors performing an English language version of a play based on Macbeth called MacBank.

We met some lovely Lithuanian ladies earlier in the day who gave us a sample of their traditional cooking...potatoes, a sour cream mixture and flax and hemp seeds. Very tasty, and we particularly loved the traditional dress they were wearing. Their potato pancakes were yummy too. We saw them boogieing to the Lithuanian songstress later in the evening. To find out more about the project the ladies in traditional dress are involved with they have a website which you can check out here .

Lithuanian ladies cooking their hearts out

Today I have subjected Mr Fluffy to the all day dog show which was a lot more fun this morning when they had the agility trials. It was most amusing watching a little King Charles Spaniel flying over the jumps. This afternoon's activities was a little akin to watching paint dry as the dogs were marched around some bowls whilst variously being asked to sit, lie down and keep still. Not quite as action packed but showed the dogs' obedience skills nicely. It wasn't all pooch central though as we went into town to watch the classic car race and mooch around the stalls.

Grasham's favourite classic car - a Saab converted to van

my favourite classic car - a Stingray

Tonight tension mounts as it's the final of the Baltic song contest. Who will win? We'll get back to you on that one.  

Söderköping 16 July 2014

It’s not every day you get to see an overhead projector in use. We arrived in Söderköping (pronounced Serdersherping) yesterday and walked around the charming town on the banks of the Göta Canal. We noticed an extremely long queue to, what we thought was, a regular restaurant but turned out to be a very famous ice cream shop (must grab one today if queue has disapeared), and a poster announcing a talk on town history at 1900 hrs.

rune stone outside the church

We duly arrived at the museum at 1900 only to find we were his only attendees. This did not deter the effervescent Ola Lönnqvist whose enthusiasm for Söderköping was only outweighed by his knowledge of the place. It was a little disconcerting to see the overhead projector on the table as we were ushered into the old schoolroom but he flashed his transparencies with a flourish as he answered one open ended question over a period of 45 minutes.

the Soderkoping bunnies - helping a baby bunny cross the river

Söderköping was an important town in the medieval period but as the land rose and the harbour diminished its importance declined and it now survives on the tourism which came with the popularity of the canal. There is a large rune stone outside the church which is not mentioned in any of the town literature. Ola suggested it was from around 1050 AD.

...............................

Loved the ice cream from Smultronstallet - can now understand the queues! After a stroll around the town looking at the gorge houses we headed off for Berg, further along the Gota canal. It was very touristy and packed so we continued on to Borgansberg which has a manually operated lock - a rarity on the canal. 

munching on an ice cream

We were told of a rather fab farm shop out of town so decided to cycle out for a bottle of cider. Twenty six kilometres later we found it. We had missed it - clearly - on the way out but found it on the way back with five minutes to spare before it closed. The aforementioned cider was 0.5% alcohol so not exactly 'getting off one's tits' material. 

loving a lock

Further along the canal tomorrow as we explore the central lakes of Sweden.

5000 miles

We have just topped the 5000 mile mark which is a pretty exciting milestone (for us anyway). As we have been pretty unsuccessful in catching any fish and, over the last couple of days, have had no major events to report apart from chilling out in the sun, we thought we would share some statistics:

Countries visited so far:

Cornwall

England

France

Belgium

Holland

Germany

Denmark

Sweden

Norway

Finland

almost circumnavigated the phallic shape

Days on the road                     57       

Miles driven                            5092

Miles per gallon (avg)             30.38

Money spent on diesel            £ 1142.00

Average overnight cost           £ 5.07 (over half of our stays have been free of charge)

Average food spend per day  £ 19.00 (for the two of us, including drinks in van)

Cost of LPG                           £ 85.00 (for heating, cooking and hot water)

All in all it’s not bad. The high cost of food in Scandinavia has been balanced by the low (if any) cost of overnight stays. Now we have left the area of endless tolls and ferry charges (Norway) our costs should diminish further.

Touch wood Dickie has behaved very well indeed and seems to love driving at 50/60mph which is the speed limit (80kph) on many of the roads in Norway and Sweden. He just purrs along all day and unlike our previous vans he hardly notices the hills and mountains. Kevin the Small But Mighty troll sits menacingly on the dashboard ensuring all is well.

We have managed to get online in the van at about three quarters of our overnight stops thanks to the wonderful, external wifi antenna. Sometimes we take a lunch break outside a Tourist Information or McDonalds and catch up on any urgent correspondence courtesy of their free wifi. Ah the joys of the modern age.

Getting water and emptying the cassette toilet (Dickie’s dunny) has not been a problem. In Norway many garages provide all the required facilities free of charge. In Sweden many of the rest areas in lay-bys have dedicated chemical toilet emptying points and external fresh water taps – all free of charge. It can get a little ‘close quarters’ however and we were most amused by a chap emptying his dunny this morning. He seemed to have an exceptionally large deposit in his cassette which took a rather lot of shaking and jiggling to remove. He was so embarrassed he kept going away before the job was complete, then returning for another round when he thought we weren’t looking. #chortle.

Motorhoming is very popular over here and in some parts of Norway every other vehicle seems to be a Bobil (as they are called there), so they are well catered for. Free parking is often offered to motorhomes even if cars have to pay.  It is appreciated that drivers of Husbils (Swedish for motorhomes) will buy their supplies and generally spend money where they are made welcome – a lesson that the UK could do with learning!