Jönköping

This guy (on the left) really knows how to travel 🙂 He has a horde of small children, a buggy and a huge rucksack, and yet somehow still enough patience to have an icecream party at the station. (Just after I took this photo, they moved to the middle of the pavement where he dished out multiple flavours of icecream. It was awesome but I don’t want to put pictures of his kids online). I am well impressed.

Pretty cool having the station directly next to the lake 🙂 and using so much glass you can see through it 🙂

The feast

Shopping and feasting (soon)

Sometimes you make sure you have enough food to get you to the next supermarket.

Sometimes you crash and don’t make it to the place you were aiming for.

Sometimes you take an extra day to hobble, wince and recover.

Sometimes you really don’t fancy another round of currants and nuts and sweetcorns.

Sometimes your nearest shop is a campsite kiosk..

Blackboard: ‘In our fridge/freezer we stock: …’

Can’t remember the last time I had my shopping packed into a plastic bag..

Sia, you make good icecream, work on your packaging!

Email: obstacles

Just got an ‘encouraging email’*:

“You’re cruising along on the way to your awesome goal… and then along comes a sudden storm warning…

What do you do?

Do you complain, sulk and get angry about your *uncontrollable* situation?

Or do you relax, accept the fact you’ll be delayed for a little while, and enjoy the challenge?

We all face unexpected storms. Sometimes metaphorical, and sometimes real ones!

Remember: “The obstacle in the way, IS the way ” – Ryan Holiday”

It was written by someone who was given an actual stormwarning last night. Kind of fits for my crash too..

I’m going to embrace not going anywhere today and alternately sit in the sun and on my swing and catch up with uploading pictures to the blog. And later I’m going to take advantage of the kitchen and make a campsite shop dinner special.

* I signed up for a newsletter a million years ago. Sometimes he has great things to say.

Good way to end a day :)

Eco icecream?

I’m lying in a hammock on the harbour front eating an eco-friendly icecream while I wait for the boat to go back and wondering..

How eco-friendly is an icecream that they only sell in a paper cup with a wooden scoopy thing (not a spoon) ?

Okay.. granted it’s not a plastic pot and a plastic spoon. That’s a pretty good start.

But.

It is printed with with coloured ink and shipped from Italy.

Every other icecream I’ve eaten this holiday has been in a waffel cone.

This stall doesn’t do waffels.

How silly is that?

Icecream was good tho 🙂

And it was made locally.

Lunchtime :)

Not pictured: the beef which I’d partly eaten and partly put away before I thought about the picture..

Shopping

Yup…

I needed lunch that wasn’t nuts and dried fruit…and there were supermarkets on my road so I didn’t even need to look for one 🙂

To be honest, if I hadn’t seen one, I would probably have been ok with the food I had with me, but there were two shops right there..

Part 1 – ICA

That one was on my side of the roadjso I went there first.

Haven’t seen a working one of these in years

Then the fruit and veg – in fridges, curiously

Putting wasabi between all the cool stuff is a mean trick

Yup, great marketing. Put the crisps right next to the veggies..

Chocolate protein pudding? Blueberry sopp?

This may be the ‘choice’ that the ‘better choice’ was based against..

German company, Swedish content. Can’t imagine many Germans buying liquorice sprinkles for their icecream, salty or otherwise…

So what did I buy?

Not pictured: the ‘healthy’ yogurt nuts and raisins…

Here they are: the ‘healthy’ pick’n’mix:

Part 2 – Coop

The thing I went in for, the salad, was the one thing I didn’t come out with.

Onto the next shop.

Salad toppings: sweetcorn, onion, hand sanitiser…

Interesting loaf of bread.. more like a stack of mini naans…

Um.. I suppose they’d last a long time..

What I bought:

Changing the battery on the speed sensor

Part 3:

Stawberries, no photo..

Müsli for breakfast

The chocolate flakes in the müsli melted yesterday and set overnight making big clusters – perfect to eat without a spoon 🙂

Should have taken a picture before eating all the biggest pieces…

Wild camping

You know, I could get used to this wild camping malarkey..

Look at this:

My hostess seems to be really well prepared for unprepared guests 😉

My brother isn’t convinced:

Sitting here with my roast beef and stuffed peppers, my powerbanks charging in the background, I think I have to agree…

..it is gloriously civilised camping 🙂

Shopping!

Found (= cycled past) a supermarket (ICA) here in Borrby and remembered that I REALLY need a toothbrush – there’s a limit to what chewing gum can achieve – so stopped and parked the bike.

There’s the obligatory bottle of hand disinfectant dispenser inside the door, but no compulsory masks or trolleys.

So. Toothbrushes

I aimed for this sort because they come with a case for the bristley bit..

Then I noticed they all have different pictures on the handles 😲🤭

Crazy.

Of course I had to look at them all…

The bluetit brush had a tiny head.. The one with bees was nice but I’d have had to dig quite a long way back. And the robin’s good too 🙂

Assorted other pictures

Jag äter en fisk! 🤯

..I’m having fish for lunch! (lit. “I’m eating a fish”)

I’m at the restaurant at the ~~end of the World~~ southernmost point of Sweden and they’re selling the kind of fish they only sell in this season (do fish have seasons??) and I didn’t buy ice cream, so it seemed like a good idea.

I have no idea what the menu says:

Actually, that’s a lie. I have gathered quite a lot of words and I’m pretty good at guessing. I can read things like ‘drinks’ and ‘sandwiches’ and ‘children’s menu’ and ‘hot meals’ and ‘baguette’ and ‘hamburger’ and ‘with chips’ or ‘with bread’. I can even read ‘smoked’ and ‘salmon’ and guess at ‘mackerel’ and ‘potatoes’ and ‘salad’. What I can’t read so well are the other kinds of fish or what’s been done to them. And I don’t know enough things to know if I like them even if I could read it. And what kind of sauce is sauce??

And I didn’t fancy the sound of ‘3 kinds of salmon’ or the look of some of the things people were eating.

But.

There was something that some people were eating that looked pretty good, so I went and asked for it in my best restaurant English 😉

“This one? Like fish&chips?” She smiled.

“Yup, please?” I smiled back.

Job done. I took the tray she handed me and found a table to sit at.

(Hah! As if life’s that easy. 😅

First the fork slid off the tray as I reached for my bike. Then everything else fell off as I bent down for the fork. Then the bike threatened to fall over. Arg. I gave up on the bike, took the computer off the front and went to the nearest table with space for the bike and sat down. Then I got back up and collected the bike, manoeuvring it slowly into position.)

Anyway.

The timer bleeps when your food’s ready to collect

Look at this!

Easily my best fish ever. And the batter! Ein Traum 🙂

There was a steady stream of people buying lunch,

eating lunch,

and clearing up after lunch,

A bin each for food, paper plates, drinks cans, some things I’ve forgotten and a rack for bottles as well as a space for trays.

No masks, no contact data, no officious people. Just happy well-fed people.

Admittedly it’s summer and it’s outdoors and warm and sunny, and granted, I haven’t eaten out much in a while, still feels good though.

And the fish was great 🙂

Checking out late (and chocolate)

In the middle of packing up my stuff I looked at the time and realised I had 5 minutes to check out.

And until the loo card would stop working.

I dropped everything, picked up my purse and the Super Important Things and went to the loo.

Luckily the reception is right next door to the loo block.

I arrived with possibly half a minute to spare if you were being generous.

After I’d paid for the night, the lady did something with the card, “you have 3 showers left, do you want a chocolate?”

Took me a while and a bit of questioning to figure out she was serious.*

Um?

Do I want chocolate?

Is that a question?

Yes..

Yes I do.

So I took one 🙂

1 bar of chocolate? That’ll be 3 showers please..

The end.

Almost. I still have to pack the tent and actually leave.

* as opposed to certain people who ask if I want cookies when I feel I’ve done good things..

Packing

Apparently normal people don’t wait until it’s 10 pm on the night before they leave to start packing.

It seems I am not normal people.

Also. I had started piling things up well in advance.

See! Even sorted into bags and baskets of similar things..

Not pictured: the piles/boxes of clothes, waterproof bags, food, ……… etc

And I didn’t have the baskets finished until 10pm.

Don’t tell me normal people don’t take until it’s nearly 10 pm on the night before they leave to get their baskets ready.

Hmm.

Those normal people might be onto something on the chance-of-giving-your-neighbour-a-heart-attack front.

Maybe also on the meltdow-esque ‘I’m-never-going-to-get-all-of-this-in-there!’ front..

🤔

Whatever.

That’s not how I roll.

The rest of the night passed in a blurry haze..

No way I’m showing you the unblurry version 😂

Flapjack!

Is there any better Kalorienbombe to take cycling?

Is there any better way to make flapjack than via a late night Skype call with a friend? *

Bits missing? Nah.. the tin was a funny shape officer…

* (If so,. I imagine it only involves said friend also having the following day off work ;p)