Jeff: Sweden part 1

We decided at this point that our game plan was to head up the west coast towards Gothenburg before heading into Norway. This meant missing Stockholm for now but we figured we could hit this on our way back down later in the season when it’s a bit colder.

We stopped in Landskrona which had a nice citadel to wonder around. We got stopped by a 6 month old Husky who demanded our attention – Catherine was very happy. We didn’t stay long but I got a quick workout in the outdoor gyms which are everywhere in Sweden. We continued on to Helsingborg where we found a great spot to spend the next couple of nights in the woods. We planned to use the Sauna but the lighting storm turned us around back to the van for the night. Next morning we were able to get a run in the morning along the promenade which usefully had 100m markers and another outdoor gym. We spent the day exploring the town trying to find a new pair of sea shoes for Catherine (as I accidently left her sea shoes on the back on the van and drove off!) We got into the bath house and enjoyed a couple of hours sea swimming and saunas before heading for lunch at a vegan Vietnamese restaurant. We really took a liking to Helsingborg and especially enjoyed the concerts in the evening which we could hear from our spot in the woods. Never heard of Hakan Hellstrom before but he is very popular here!

Catherine said we weren’t allowed a morning run as she had planned a short 20km walk around the Kullaberg nature reserve. So we drove and parked up in the reserve and headed off around the coast of the peninsular heading first to the lighthouse and then down the coast. We quickly came across a sign for a cave which was 55 meters down, at sea level, and so we thought it would be good to see it and started the climb down which was a little more difficult due to recent rock slides but there was a rope to help. Once down at sea level we saw the cave and were disappointed as it was very small. We climbed back up the hill and continued on, with the agreement that we wouldn’t bother looking at more caves. We continued on through woods, fields cliff edges and saw so many different things including a climber scaling the cliff edge with no ropes and a diver jumping off a boat alone, these Swedes like adventures! We also found some animals including deer, cows and goats (which Rich loves) before wandering into the town, and continuing around it and back into the reserve. I did have one area I really wanted to see in the reserve which was called Nimis and Arx which are art instilations which were put there by Lars Vilks, who tried to ensure they could remain by selling them (using a contract on a piece of drift wood) and declaring the land an independent called Ladonia with 15,000 nomad inhabitants (which was fine until there were applications to citizenship from a group of 4,000 Pakistani’s who wanted to move there and did not understand the concept of a micronation).

Nimis is a tower built of driftwood and is 9 stories tall and can be climbed, we chose not to climb it due to the sheer number of nails we could see, let alone the ones we couldn’t see. Arx is made out of stone and concrete and looks a bit like a melted sandcastle.

While these two things were great to see it had be a hell of a climb down from the cliff top to sea level and we had to climb back which really got our heart racing. We still had several kilometers to go on this walk and it was now getting really hot. There were some optional detours from the main path, up to high view points but at this point we were around 16km and ready to get back to Jeff so looking at the optional hills we decided to stay on flat land. Just before we got back to Jeff there was a detour down to the sea which we decided to take and Rich considered a swim but we decided it was a little rough and headed back to jeff and on north slightly to a camper stop next to the sea with 5 other campers.

The next couple of days were beach days in Tylosand which is a beautiful beach area. On the way there it was looking cloudy but we had a couple of jobs to do like servicing the van and picking up some shopping so we got these done and then found the beach just in time for the sun to come out. We headed down with some lunch and chilled on the beach for awhile before heading out into the sea on the paddleboard. After awhile on the paddleboard we came back and thought we would have our snack of some crisps only to find them missing, we were sure we had bought them and then the realisation struck us…..the bloody sea gulls had got into our backpack and stolen the entire huge bag of sealed crisps and eaten them all. Sure enough a little behind our chairs in the sand dunes was the wrapper, those little buggers!

We spent the rest of the day enjoying the beach, watching the sea gulls try their luck with other peoples food and swimming/paddle boarding in the sea until the sun went behind some clouds at 6. We headed back to Jeff and set ourselves up to for the night. There were about 10 campers staying with us at the beach and it was a quiet night. The next morning after a run we headed into the local town on bikes to have a look around and see the Picasso statue of a ladies head (1 of only 14 in the world) and a fountain before heading back to spend another day at the beach (this time without crisps). Its been nice to have a couple of chilled days at the beach and now we are planning the drive up north and what to do for midsummer which is coming up this weekend and is the second biggest holiday over here, after Christmas.