Hällefors

We toyed with the idea of staying at the pretty bathing area on Vänern for a third night, but we woke to heavy rain that was forecast to stay with us all day, so we moved on. We'd intended our next stop to be a Stallplass by a lake in the town of Flipstad. It was on Park4Night as a free stopover but when we got there, we found they charged 140SEK (just less than £14) for 24 hours and 170SEK if you wanted electricity. The access to the town and a park was good and the view of the lake was nice but the parking bays were sloped and we were near a road. Feeling spoiled because we knew we'd probably be able to find a good place to stay for free, we used the service point and drove on.

Shortly afterwards we came across a circular gravel car park hidden away in the woods. A 30 second walk through the trees and we were on the shore of Saxen Lake, a good sized body of water lined with forest and the occasional boat house or pretty little home peeking out from amidst the greenery. Will made a beeline for the water and enjoyed floating on his back, soaking in the sun's warmth, before swimming over to a headland about 250m away.

It had been pretty humid and we'd had a lot of washing to dry. We never like to be seen as taking up more space than necessary in small but well used communal parking areas like the one we'd stayed at for the previous 2 nights, but we were the only ones at tonight's stopover, so felt free to fling open the windows and doors to get some much needed fresh air into the van. We had a peaceful night's stay and enjoyed the isolation.Read more