Day 467: Naval Base at Karlskrona

Well, it was awful. In a word, awful. The air pump we'd bought didn't fit the mattress, so I had to blow it up manually. Then it didn't fit in the tent either, which was absolutely miniscule. We basically slept on top of each other, and there was no room either side for clothes, accessories or dog beds. The tent fabric was quite thin, which meant that it stayed light all night (full moon and then sunrise at 4am), and since it was so small all of the inner walls got drenched in condensation from our breath.

Both of us spent most of the night awake and I hated every minute of it. It's going to be a long month.

First stop was Biltema again to pick up a larger tent. It's hard to make informed choices when all of the info is in Swedish! But the dimensions were included on this one and it would at least fit our mattress. We also bought a compressor-type pump, which charges via USB - very modern! Hopefully tonight will go a bit better.

Finally we drove into Karlskrona, where it was raining steadily. This world heritage site is a naval base that was established when Sweden was a European power, back in the 17th century, and is still an active base today. Both of us were extremely tired and put off by the rain, so we just drove around for a while and looked at the site from inside the car.

Had lunch at the maritime museum and checked out the submarines in there which were quite cool, and the buffet lunch was great as well. Buffets aren't a maligned concept in Sweden, they're actually quite popular and the food was good. While we ate the clouds cleared so we drove around town again, looking a bit more closely and filming as well. The site was OK in the end so it wasn't a total loss of a day.

Drove an hour out of town to a campground which was quite nice. Found a good spot and made camp, this time the mattress went up easily and the tent is much larger - I can actually move around in it!Read more