Where’s Bertie? He's in a wooded car park not far from the beach to the east of Aröd, which is to the NW of Göteborg.
A warm sunny morning kicked off with an energetic start as a run along the seafront road to the south of our car park was followed by a dip in the sea. Swimming seems to be such a popular pastime (the waterfront is dotted at regular intervals with swimming piers), that I thought I ought to give it a go, and Mick was up for coming along too.
She's going in
I disengaged brain and at the bottom of the steps just plunged in, reporting back to Mick that it was quite warm. That was an outright lie. Within seconds I was fighting my body's urge to shiver and gasp. Just a tiny bit of swimming around got me used to the temperature.
He's going in!
He didn't disengage brain. As a result he spent a few minutes splashing himself gingerly with water and gasping before finally bringing himself to swim. By then I'd given up on a photo and was back in the water myself.
We didn't stay in long, but it was enough to make a valid claim to have swum in the sea.
A very late al fresco breakfast and a pore over the map and at noon off we went, stopping after only half an hour or so in a McDonald's car park for coffee.
I'm sure we could have found somewhere more attractive, but the bonus of McDonald's car park was that (with the use of our wifi booster) we were able to get online and finally download some newspapers. It's not that we want to read the news, but we've been missing our nightly crossword. All set with the last seven days' worth of puzzles, and with coffee and pastries consumed, northwards we went once more.
Our meal and bed times are all over the place (but generally late) at the moment, so it was gone 3 by the time we stopped at a motorway service station picnic area for lunch. It was a nicer location than you might think.
By then I'd had a rethink about our destination for the night, opting to find somewhere less distant than originally planned. This car park at Aröd is what I came up with, and for the third time today the SatNav warned us of a toll ahead.
Before we left home I registered us for the payment of tolls in Norway, but it hadn't occurred to me to check whether there were toll roads in Sweden, and if so, how they worked. Belatedly a bit of Googling was called for whilst Mick drove, which told us that there is a 'tax' payable on the motorway around Göteborg, but that it is only levied Monday to Friday. It would only have been a few pounds anyway, but I'd still rather hit it on a non-chargable day.
Having driven through lots of very green agicultural land, with a landscape gradually drifting from dead-flat to gently undulating, the SatNav finally told us to leave the motorway and after 10km of increasingly narrow roads, we arrived in our car park. It puts me very much in mind of a Scottish Forestry Commission car park, except fre of the trees here are conifers.
The sun is beating down again, having driven through various levels of cloudiness this afternoon and, at 6pm, the sun is still high in the sky. It must be time to go and take a stroll down the path to the beach.
Later ... I did take a stroll. Below is what I found, with the first photo looking north up the coast, the second looking south:
A warm sunny morning kicked off with an energetic start as a run along the seafront road to the south of our car park was followed by a dip in the sea. Swimming seems to be such a popular pastime (the waterfront is dotted at regular intervals with swimming piers), that I thought I ought to give it a go, and Mick was up for coming along too.
She's going in
I disengaged brain and at the bottom of the steps just plunged in, reporting back to Mick that it was quite warm. That was an outright lie. Within seconds I was fighting my body's urge to shiver and gasp. Just a tiny bit of swimming around got me used to the temperature.
He's going in!
He didn't disengage brain. As a result he spent a few minutes splashing himself gingerly with water and gasping before finally bringing himself to swim. By then I'd given up on a photo and was back in the water myself.
We didn't stay in long, but it was enough to make a valid claim to have swum in the sea.
A very late al fresco breakfast and a pore over the map and at noon off we went, stopping after only half an hour or so in a McDonald's car park for coffee.
I'm sure we could have found somewhere more attractive, but the bonus of McDonald's car park was that (with the use of our wifi booster) we were able to get online and finally download some newspapers. It's not that we want to read the news, but we've been missing our nightly crossword. All set with the last seven days' worth of puzzles, and with coffee and pastries consumed, northwards we went once more.
Our meal and bed times are all over the place (but generally late) at the moment, so it was gone 3 by the time we stopped at a motorway service station picnic area for lunch. It was a nicer location than you might think.
By then I'd had a rethink about our destination for the night, opting to find somewhere less distant than originally planned. This car park at Aröd is what I came up with, and for the third time today the SatNav warned us of a toll ahead.
Before we left home I registered us for the payment of tolls in Norway, but it hadn't occurred to me to check whether there were toll roads in Sweden, and if so, how they worked. Belatedly a bit of Googling was called for whilst Mick drove, which told us that there is a 'tax' payable on the motorway around Göteborg, but that it is only levied Monday to Friday. It would only have been a few pounds anyway, but I'd still rather hit it on a non-chargable day.
Having driven through lots of very green agicultural land, with a landscape gradually drifting from dead-flat to gently undulating, the SatNav finally told us to leave the motorway and after 10km of increasingly narrow roads, we arrived in our car park. It puts me very much in mind of a Scottish Forestry Commission car park, except fre of the trees here are conifers.
The sun is beating down again, having driven through various levels of cloudiness this afternoon and, at 6pm, the sun is still high in the sky. It must be time to go and take a stroll down the path to the beach.
Later ... I did take a stroll. Below is what I found, with the first photo looking north up the coast, the second looking south:
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