It was a 3 ½ hour ferry crossing from Denmark to Gothenburg in western Sweden. The thing we most noticed on the crossing was the volume of alcohol that most passengers were buying from the on-board shop. People were wheeling large shopping trolleys piled high with wines, beers and spirits. We had assumed Denmark wasn’t significantly cheaper than Sweden – the cost of drinks in Denmark was high, but having had several years in London didn’t seem as bad as we remembered. We have since been told that alcohol costs in Sweden are a lot more which explains the shopping spree of the passengers, particularly as we were approaching the midsummer celebrations which is a National holiday in Sweden.
The tranquillity of Denmark was soon a distant memory as we had to sharpen up our senses for navigating the complex roads around Sweden’s second city. Our parking up area was in a port parking area opposite where our ferry had come in, but it was quite a convoluted route to get there – thank goodness for Google maps. It was early evening by the time we had parked up, so we decided to head back across the river to the more central areas, get our bearings and find a bite to eat. There was a ferry terminal just 5 minutes’ walk away, and the free ferry took us the short distance to the other side. It was a pleasant sunny evening and for a Monday evening the bars and restaurants looked very lively.
We found ourselves outside ‘the fish church’ of Gothenburg. Feskekorka is in an iconic building with pointed arched windows and does almost look church like. It has recently reopened after restoration work and the market hall inside houses a restaurant with four different menus and seating areas. We were led to one serving good comfort fish dishes. We loved the ambiance of the place, and sat at a counter taking it all in. Our friendly waiter was very keen to talk and ask questions about the UK, including what we thought about the England football fans incident before the Serbia match. The food was delicious.
Afterwards we had a walk towards the Haga district with wooden buildings and cobbled streets. The bars and restaurants were quite buzzy, but the shops which the area is famous for were closed, so an area we needed to revisit the following day.
Back in Lo11y we planned what we wanted to see the following day. I have to say I was a bit surprised by Colin’s number one choice – a visit to the World of Volvo. Bear in mind that Colin has always poo pooed Volvos to his Volvo owning friends (which has seemed to increase the last few years) as ‘pipe and slippers’ vehicles. The main manufacturing site for Volvos is on the outskirts of Gothenburg, but this exhibition has only been open since April this year and the building in the centre of Gothenburg did look impressive.
Before we set out the following morning, we had a bash at resolving our UK SIM card issue with Vodaphone. After about half an hour of running through the issue with a helpful lady in Egypt they still couldn’t work out why we had an issue as we should have some roaming data left. She offered to transfer us to a technical department, but with a time slot to get into the Volvo exhibition we had to get going.
It was a ferry ride and tram ride to get to World of Volvo. The building was very impressive from the outside and this continued to the inside. On the third floor there were various activities where Volvo were trying to demonstrate their technologies on safety, and how the human body, mind and senses play a big part in how we drive and react to conditions. Colin had a go in a full-size excavator, and I tried a mini one, and I went in a wind tunnel with slightly scary results (see below). There was also an exhibition of Volvos through the ages.
To be fair it was an interesting place and we’d been round it all in an hour. There was a popular bistro restaurant on the second floor, but it felt too early for lunch so we made our way by tram back to a central area with shops, to look at buying some more warm layering clothes and a phone shop to ask about Swedish SIM cards.
We called in at a nice food market housed in an old market hall building. It reminded us of the ones we so liked in Spain, with delicious looking fresh produce and a few small restaurant counters. The visit to the phone shop confirmed our suspicions that we couldn’t get a data sim for a truck that wasn’t on a contract unless we had a Swedish ID number and address. We were told the law came in a couple of years ago to try and clamp down on cross border drug dealers. We were told to try 7-Eleven who should be able to sell us one.
We walked back towards the Haga district and, more than ready for a coffee, we found ourselves at Café Husaren, famous for its super-sized kanelbullens (cinnamon buns). They were the size of a frisbee, so we shared one, although Colin kept pointing out most people in the café had one to themselves.
After wandering through the now open shopping street of Haga, we went into a 7-Eleven and half an hour later came out with a registered Swedish SIM card in hand. The shop assistant couldn’t have been more helpful – she called the phone company to check we could use it in Norway and she registered it on line for us. All we had to do was activate it and she gave us clear instructions (so we thought) in how to do this.
We had a walk up to a viewpoint from a fortress called Skansen Kronan where we had good views over the red roofs of Gothenburg and after a bit more mooching around the central areas we ended up back at the market hall and dined in a restaurant attached to it. We called in at a bar heading back to Lo11y, then were ‘forced’ to call in at another bar when we discovered we’d missed our ferry and there wasn’t another one for half an hour.
We liked Gothenburg. It had a nice easy going feel about it. We were ready to head our way to the northern archipelago islands the following day, where we planned to park up and get out on the bikes to cycle around several of the islands which are joined by bridges or have free ferry services.
We navigated our way out of Gothenburg and soon found ourselves on a small ferry to the island of Hono. It was a cool breezy day but bright and sunny. After stocking up with fresh supplies we parked up in a marina car park in a little town called Rod. It had good facilities and a nice view out over the harbour.
We were happy to get out on our bikes and get some fresh air and exercise. The islands aren’t very big, with Hono being the largest, so we’d explored Hono and the neighbouring Foto covering only about 15 miles. We diverted off to see lots of beautiful bays and harbour areas. As always, the properties were all immaculate – we guess most are weekend and holiday retreats for people working in Gothenburg and imagine it must be pretty windy here all year round.
Back at Lo11y, Colin set about cleaning the bikes and discovered he has a puncture in one of his tubeless tyres. After a lot of huffing and puffing, I heard a loud bang, which was our one and only pump blowing up. Oh dear…. As most other vehicles on the site had bikes with them, we thought they’d be no problem borrowing one. However, it soon became apparent none of them had valves like the ones on Colins bike. The owner of the site said Colin could use his compressor, but that didn’t have the right attachments either. Colin was pointed in the direction of a local bike shop where they said the owner, John, should be able to help. Colin cycled off on my bike to find the little place with a green door that all the locals seemed to know about but didn’t seem able to describe exactly where it was – ‘just go past the church – you can’t miss it’. Well, he did miss it. We did locate it on google maps that evening, and discovered it was open at 10am the following day.
After a leisurely breakfast, Colin went off with wheel in hand. Hay presto, he returned half an hour later with an inner tube in hand and a new bike pump. The bike shop didn’t have a suitable pump for Colins tubeless tyres, so Colin now only had the option to fit an inner tube in to fix the issue. Thankfully this worked.
This time we cycled onto the island north of Hono called Ockero which we could see from our parking spot. We had planned on catching a ferry to one of the other islands but could see they looked so small there probably wasn’t anything different to see, so we ended up cycling back the way we’d done the previous day to the main harbour area of Hono which had several nice-looking eateries and some shops. We decided to have our main meal of the day here and ended up in an extremely nice Swedish restaurant enjoying not so Swedish moules and frites.
We had the usual joy of watching the dreadful Euros match against Denmark in Lo11y this time. There was a lot of spooling on the SIM card we’d purchased, but we could just about follow it.
We were coming into the Midsummer weekend which is a huge deal in Sweden. They had a National holiday for it, and we were told Friday was a holiday from work day, as Midsummer fell over the weekend, and we should expect the roads to be busy. It is a time when families meet up for big celebrations and young people go away and party all weekend. Our plan was to get further up the coast towards Oslo, and we chose a coastal town called Smogen, which looked very scenic, and appeared to be very popular with people from Gothenburg. It has a beautiful pier area in the centre with colourful wooden houses, trendy boutiques and countless seafood restaurants and bars. The roads were pretty busy, and we were a bit surprised to be pulled over by the police not far from Smogen to show Colin’s driving licence and he was breathalysed. Thankfully he had nothing to worry about, but when the alcohol blood limit is less than half that we have in the UK, you can see it would be very easy to get caught out. The police were also doing speed checks, but very covertly - i.e. hiding behind a rock or lying flat on the ground like a sniper.
Just before Smogen we spotted a car park with terrific views over another harbour called Kungshamm., and although a bit of a walk from the centre of Smogen, we thought it would be a quiet spot and it was free. We walked across the bridge to Smogen and found the central pier area. It was buzzing with families and young people. The young people were dressed in cool pale linen clothing with the girls (and some of the guys) wearing floral head wear which is the tradition for midsummer.
There were some big swanky boats moored up in the centre with groups of hip young people wining and dining and trying to out-do each other with their music. It was a beautiful sunny day, if not a bit cool in the breeze. We had a wander onto the rocky headland where there were views to a neighbouring island with a red lighthouse people can rent. We had a spot of lunch and then caught a boat across to the harbour of Kungshamm. That turned out to be a bit disappointing with most places being closed that afternoon. We headed back to central Smogen, where we felt like we were the only sober people walking around. We toyed with the idea of staying in town to dine but decided we should go back to Lo11y to eat some of the fresh food we had, just in case there was an issue at the Norwegian border. With Norway not being in the EU, we’d been led to believe the border crossing would have more rigid checks.
The car park was pretty full of campers and cars when we returned, but we had Lo11y in the prime spot for the views. We enjoyed the most beautiful sunset at about 10.30 pm.
We awoke to heavy rain and grey skies the following day (as forecast), so it was a good day to be driving to our fifth country of this trip, Norway. We had one final stop at a town in Sweden at a small port town called Stromstad to get a coffee and cinnamon bun and fill up with diesel before crossing into the more expensive Norway.
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