Wooden it be nice

We sort of had a choice today, either get the inflatable canoes out and go for a paddle or get the walking shoes out and go for a walk. Although the water was calm, the weather was not too warm so we all agreed that it was more walking weather than boating weather. We did a bit of a search and were coming up short on options for our walk as there was nothing showing on our app. Then I managed to spot a cafe by a lake that was 6.5kms away, obviously meaning a 13km round trip which I was a little worried may be too much and not to everyone’s liking. But luckily, when it comes to motivation, we have always been much more responsive to the carrot (cake) than the stick and so we very easily all agreed that was the plan. So far so smooth for all our decision making today.
Getting organised was next and that was also pretty easy, Jess took care of the walking gear and I got the sandwiches made while the twins just took care of getting themselves ready. Midday came and we were out the door. We were a little unsure of our route, as I said there was nothing showing up on our app but we figured just take a chance and if it fails we can always go on the road, even if that would make it a bit further. Given how smoothly everything had been going so far it was no real surprise to see a signpost exactly where it should be at the start of the path and off we went into the woods. I know that Ruby in particular will be very pleased to hear that there was a wide range of magnificent trees, even if the vast majority were pine. Our path started off as just that, then developed into a loggers track and the last part was on the road, although it was very quiet. Until the road, we may have been the last people on earth as it seemed we had the whole wilderness to ourselves. Just before we reached our destination there was a little playground and there was one thing that we all had a go at swinging around on, very fun. Where the cafe was there was an old church next to the lake so we laid out our rug and sat and had our picnic. Once we had polished that off we moved on to the cafe which was very basic, like so much of Sweden it seems that keeping it simple was their goal, but they did have a good selection of cakes so we chose 4 different types to be washed down with tea and coffee and took our seats on the vintage furniture. We cut everything into 4 so we could each try everything and it was all nice and tasty. While there we realised that the owner reminded us a lot of our friend Steve, we christened him Swedish Steve. This also made us realise that appallingly we had forgotten his birthday which was the other day while we were driving. We agreed we needed to do something to rectify this.
We set off on our way back and stopped again at the playground for a bit and then stopped again at a loppis. These are everywhere in Sweden and are basically a permanent garage sale. We had a look around this one and found a rug that we thought would go perfectly in Lily and Ruby’s new flat so we picked that up, strapped it to Jessica’s bag and we were back on our way. Most of the way back it looked as though it may rain, and at one point there was a very sudden loud rumble of thunder but apart from literally a few drops it was dry all the way. We did stop at one point to make a very silly film of us singing a Swedish birthday song for Steve so hopefully he will not be too upset it was late. We also sat for a bit of a break with a pb&j sandwich, or in Tate’s case a j sandwich as she is not a fan of pb. The last stretch of our walk was as enjoyable as the rest had been, we were all in agreement that it had been a very chill stroll and not that difficult at all. Back at the site we did all need to have showers and it was certainly one of the best campsite showers I have ever come across. It was a pretty awesome day all round, which does make me worry for tomorrow, but for that we will just have to wait and see.Read more