Or parts of.

Just woken up.

It’s perfect weather out there: sunny, blue sky, no clouds 🌄

Might have made more sense to sleep in the twilight-y bit, and look out in the real light..

Anyways.

Look!

It’s always hard to show how good things look on photos.. Hard to mess these up, tho, even with dirty windows and a less-than-stellar phone camera..

Now I can go to bed 🙂

Sorry there’s no picture.. just got a very short glimpse

But I can’t see it…

Still not dark.. instead it’s almost light 🙂

The guy across the isle left, so I stole his seat.

I’m still going backwards, but now I have a table 🙂

“Erm. No. I have a booking number, but I don’t think I have a ticket… I assumed they’d send one, but if they did it hasn’t arrived yet..”

“What’s your name?”

“Jesse”

She typed my name into her ticket machine and told me I was going to Lulea, but I was in the wrong seat. That’s technology for you. Impressive but fussy. She said I could stay where I am tho 🙂

Yay 🙂

And it doesn’t matter that I don’t have a ticket as long as I have the booking number (and my name 🙂 )

😅

Or running away from the dark? 🤔

The sun sets in Stockholm at ~ 22:10 and at midnight in Lulea.

It then rises at ~3:30 in Stockholm and ~1:05 in Lulea.

I left Stockholm in twilight, and it’s still light now, at 22:20 in the suburbs.. but I guess it would be anyway. It wasn’t really dark last night until almost 23:00.

What time is it going to get dark while I’m on the train northwards? 🤔

Wheeeee!!!

Lulea here I come 🙂

Nice here tho 🙂

Just about 🙂

Yay!

Spent a couple of hours on the beach, now off to the Warmshowers house to drop off my bike 🙂

Not sharing tho 😂

Indeed.

But where’s the fun in that?

Even if that fun falls squarely in the Type 2 category.

* the tealady, when she came to pick up my cup.

We had a good yak about cycling paths and tracks and tics and (bike)-holidays past-and-present.. and then she went back to her caravan and reported back all the news to the others 🙂 Guess that saves them all having to talk to the crazy lady with the overloaded bike and a liking for mint tea 😂😉

“Do you want some hot water? – for tea?”

I turned around and saw a woman standing in what looked like pyjamas, on my side of the road dividing my tent and her caravan.

“Um. Er. I.. I don’t have any tea…”

“That’s ok. I will give you some tea. Do you have a cup?”

She smiled. “I will give you a cup”

“No.. I packed an awful lot of things, but no cup..” l gestured in the general direction of my ridiculously huge heap of luggage.

And off she went.

I wondered if I looked especially English, and what I was going to do if she produced black tea for me.

A few minutes later, I’d finished emptying my tent and was attaching the bike alarm to the bike with sticky pads and cable ties and trying not to lose the peeled off paper in the wind while also not dropping the alarm, the stickers or the cable ties, or sticking anything on wonky.

“Is minty ok?”

“Uh?” (Minty? Heh? What?Whirrrrwhirrwhirrclick.. ohhhh: ‘mint tea’)

My tealady was back, waving a teabag at me.

“Oh! Yeah, that’s perfect! Thank you so much!”

She handed me the teabag, which I promptly dropped in the grass 🙈

“It’s very hot. Be careful. I will put it on the ground. Enjoy.”

And then she was gone. Presumably to drink her own tea.

I put up my chair in her honour (and only nearly fell over once) and am now sitting and drinking posh* mint tea out of a proper china mug with cats on it, watching this quiet corner of the world get up and potter around.

It’s really rather civilised 🙂

I have an offer for somewhere to stay tonight, too, and/or store my bike while I head north.

What a great First Morning 🙂

* (= Lipton, triangle bags)

I’m showered, dressed, almost dried off.

Tent’s dry (and it hasn’t rained yet..)

..must be time to pack up and face the day 🙂

Sounds close enough to bedding 😴

Tent’s up, I’m going to finish my sandwich while I write this, and call it a night.

Goodnight world 🙂

---

The night receptionist let me in, once I filled in all his paperwork I could choose where to put my tent up from the electric-free bays.

J was electrics, so it had to be bay H. Obviously. (Maybe not so obvious, but anyway. Sometimes I need unnecessary criteria to make making decisions easier).

There was a level-ish bit with two trees which I originally thought was great (and hammock friendly) but on closer inspection turned out to be soggy and not all that flat. The next level bit was next to a party of Germans being entertained by one guy telling them (and the rest of the campsite) tales of his heroic acts of heroism.. and yet I was/am too tired to really care so I set up camp.

Not too tired to appreciate the tent tho.

I absolutely love this tent.

It went up so well, despite me being stupid-tired and having forgotten all the tricks I learned last year.

I haven’t unpacked anything beside the bare minimum: tent, mat, sleeping bag, light, citronella candle (unlit), sandwiches washkit.

Everything else is in a heap in the ‘porch’. I’ll need to find a good way to arrange it all soon.. but not tonight 🙂

Goodnight world.

Also much appreciate/d the sandwiches 🙂

Saw these on the way through Stockholm:

We’re here to make things work.

Cancel your plans.

Make some mischief.

Raining hard outside. Windy.

Packed the last bit of my bike inside the station.

Plan was to leave the bike in a bike box and my luggage in a luggage locker and find a train northbound. The train website I found while I was on the bus had said the train was fully booked, so I wanted to find someone to ask..

But.

The train station is pretty, in a station-y sort of way, but also mostly deserted.

No one in the ticket office, no help from the ticket machines.

I’m way too tired to wrangle a bike to a different part of a station that may or may not be helpful.

Half an hour of googling and researching and writing to Warmshowers people later I phoned a campsite instead.

Priorities: first sleep then think 🙂

And the rain stopped and the wind dropped and sun came back out.

Yay 🙂

After a manner..

What a lot of stuff.

🙈

No wonder the road’s all wet…

First glimpse of the Baltic 🙂

Last time I was here, I was introduced to an app called Turf. You can claim parts of cities by standing in particular areas for a set period of time, mostly around 15 seconds.

I remembered the app as we were approaching the city and opened it… and the exact place the bus stopped was one of the turf areas.. so I claimed it 🙂

And now I count as an advanced traveller.

Yay 🙂

This presumably qualifies me for the trip to the North…

😅🤔

This is mostly what the landscape’s been like for many kms..

I remember being amazed by all the wild lupins during my first trip here, and now I’m amazed all over again 🙂

Don’t know how I forgot them really. There are so many (in some places)

There’s a JCB (-type) company just before Ljungby and they have a JCB as a water fountain, with water pouring out of the digger bucket.

So cool 😍

Too busy looking to take a picture 🙂

..but so do their workers 🙂

😂🤔

The ‘logistics’ part was written on the other end of the building..

Argh.

I woke up at the far end of the bridge.

The bridges are some of my favourite parts of the journey…

Slept acrossmone bridge, woke up in time to eat at least part of a breadbun on the second bridge.