Cruising the Inlandvagen

It seems like it is a bit of a windy week here in Sweden, forecasts for last night were predicting severe gusts. I am sure the top of the van would be fine but we don’t want to risk it and so we put the tent up and this time the twins didn’t put up much of an argument about sleeping in there so it was Jess and me who got to brave it. It wasn’t too uncomfortable, although the blow up mats did separate a bit in the night, and Jess did disturb me about 3am when she had to go to the toilet. The rain was also starting about then and the noise of that kept us awake a bit, but overall, out of ten I would give it a 6-7. It was a bit rude when the alarm went off, that’s not really a sound you want to hear on holiday but Jess did have a bit of work to do. So we got up and took care of that before starting to get everything ready to move on again. That seems to be getting a bit more frequent as we are heading in the direction of home.
One of the great things about camping life is just how helpful everyone on sites are. So for example, whenever we are packing or unpacking the van, or doing things like filling up the water, someone will come and help us. I know this because I will often hear ‘Hallo, it’s the water man’ or ‘Hallo, it’s the gas man’, and Jess and the twins will giggle away. I have never met any of these people myself, but they have proven to be very helpful to us over the trip, with so many things we gave needed help with, as they were again today as we were packing up.
We were ready to go about 11am, and after going to Mora to fill up, I thought it was best to just do it today, we were on our way south. The drive was almost straight down the middle of Sweden, on the Inlandvagen which covers quite a lot of the country. Jess was on the first leg and it was fairly slow going, for some reason the speed limit the whole way was 80kmh despite it being a good road with not much traffic so it felt like we were just trundling along. We made a quick stop to get some bread for lunch and then did our usual search for somewhere spectacular to eat but our hearts weren’t in it as Jess needed a break from driving and I was hungry so we just stopped somewhere acceptable. Then once on our way again after our sandwiches there was a very lovely spit about 5 minutes down the road. The story of our trip.
The drive was changing a bit the further south we travelled, less pine trees and more farmland, although still loads of lakes. Amusingly at one point we even drove past a town called Bjorneborg. Musically, after listening to a blend on Deezer that didn’t seem to contain any of my rocking tunes I decided that we had been in Sweden far too long to have not listened to ABBA so I made them play several of their bops to take us through to our destination, a place called Skovde, which would not be on our itinerary except it has a high ropes course and this is something Tate is keen to do again so that is our plan tomorrow. And tonight, despite it being a bit gusty, no one is too enthusiastic about the tent so the twins are up the top, hopefully they don’t get blown away in the night.Read more