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Published: October 5th 2009
With high summer fast approaching this part of the world, we left Oslo and drove west over the border into Sweden to what was instantly a much softer landscape. Endless forests still covered the horizon but it no longer felt quite so raw. The mountains had changed to rolling hills and the wider roads meant that we could enjoy more of the scenery; no longer the intense concentration that Norway demanded.
Whilst in Denmark, we had chatted with a Dutchman who gave us loads of information about free overnight parking stops in Sweden, so we hoped that Sweden would be the free camping haven promised in so many other countries but not quite delivered. We’d planned to head roughly north to Mora and Lake Siljan area before going east to Stockholm. Following the Baltic coast down and over to the island of Oland, we’d then go west through the Glass kingdom and up to Lake Vanern and Vattern before going south again to Gothenburg and finally to Malmo to drive over the Oresund bridge back into Denmark.
Over the first few days in Sweden, we drove north through the Varmland province towards Lake Siljan in the Dalarna region. Considering
this was Sweden’s peak holiday period, the roads were very quiet - oddly what other traffic we did pass, were all classic American cars in tip top condition. Nobody seemed to be driving a modern car. The colours were shockingly pastel and the wealth of designs amazing; it was possible to see the evolution of American car design. The local wooden architecture complements the classic cars giving the whole place a middle-town American time warp.
Taking it easy we spent the next week pottering around the region visiting towns during the day and then pulling up late evening to stop for the night. Following the Dutch guy’s information we stayed at some fantastic locations, mostly beside a lake or in the middle of nature reserves, completely on our own. We spent most evenings, albeit high from toxic wafts of industrial-strength mosquito repellent, watching one glorious sunset after another across gently rippling lakes, accompanied by the sound of silence and the odd bit of nature that happened to stroll or swim by.
On our way to Leksand at the Eastern end of Lake Siljan to buy a new fishing rod, having run over the last one, the volume of
classic cars on the roads increases exponentially and we arrived to a heaving town filled to the brim with classics, tents and campervans. Leksand was hosting the National Classic car meet - hence the amount of classic cars we had seen over the last week in the area. No time warp then.
We left the Dalarna region and headed east making lakeside or nature reserve stopovers every night on our leisurely way to Stockholm. We arrived at the camperstop in the middle of Stockholm to gloriously hot weather and headed straight into town to hammer the Stockholm passes that the camperstop reception had given to us for free after another couple left early. First stop in Stockholm was the Vasa museum to have a look at the doomed 17th century warship. Too narrow to begin with, she sank on the maiden voyage and lay protected for 300 years under the sea; she was able to be raised virtually intact. Housed in a specially designed museum, its possible to walk around every deck of the ship, on an awe inspiring scale, it’s a very interesting exhibition. Before the cards expired, we also fitted in the Modern Art museum, the Oriental
museum before finishing the day with a Harbour boat tour.
The final day in Stockholm saw us sick of Arts and culture so we hit the shops before wandering around Gamla Stan, the old historical centre. It’s likely that the fantastic weather added to our opinion of Stockholm but it really was one of the highlights of our trip to Sweden.
Trouble with our gas boiler in the Van saw us heading west after leaving Stockholm towards a motorhome dealer to have it looked at. Staying overnight with them, they checked it out first thing the next morning and diagnosed a loose connection. All fixed, our boiler works again.
We headed back east towards Norrkoping before re-trying the boiler that evening. It doesn’t work. We fiddle about with the connections and suddenly it fires into life. Aah right, I see, the dealer charged us to find the fault not to actually fix it. A bit fed up we left Norrkoping and headed south following the Baltic coast to Kalmar before driving across to the island of Oland.
A huge limestone plain, we spent a few days exploring this 120km long island full of deserted beaches, nature
reserves and lots of historical monuments. With lots of wild camping areas, we headed down towards a tiny hamlet early one evening and encountered a herd of cows heading home. Unfortunately they were in no rush and took quite a liking to the Van, rubbing their heads and horns over the bodywork. As you can guess, we were now quite concerned about saving our relatively dent free van from the increasingly investigative cows. Unable to open the main door due to the numbers of them gathered outside, we tried to move them on by waving and shooing from the front windows and very slowly they amble on but not before getting in a few last rubs.
After leaving Oland, we headed back to the mainland and drove northwest through Sweden’s Glass Kingdom. Named after the high numbers of glass manufacturers there, we plumped for a modern style glass factory and watched the blowers at work in the intense temperatures making it look easy.
Heading north again, we drove up to the vast inland lakes of Vattern and Vanern - vast inland stretches of water, with pretty, medieval towns dotted along the shores. We pottered slowly through this area
and slow made our way back to the west coast to visit Gothenburg.
Gothenburg turned out to be a nightmare to find somewhere to park - it’s the only town in Sweden that we’d been unable to get any parking information on and motorhome bloggers were full of woes about Gothenburg. The huge Amusement Park that dominates the town has the campsites sewn up and not actually wanting to go to the amusement park, we headed into Gothenburg, driving around trying to find somewhere to park the van. After about an hour and half after having tried all the usual suspects such as marina’s, park and rides, railway stations and sport centre’s, we found some lorry parking outside the ferry terminal and cycled into town looking for somewhere better. The couple of hours that we cycled around gave us a taster of the city and it would have been nice to stay for a bit longer, but given the high campsite fee’s, along with not finding anywhere suitable to park up overnight, we headed out to the coast late afternoon and spend the night at an idyllic little harbour in Lerkil watching the sailboats come in at sunset.
We followed the west coast down or a while before driving across to Kristianstad to then come along the southwest coast of Sweden. We visited Ales Stennar - Sweden’s Stonehenge. Set out in a ship shape, the stones make for a nice walk, the only problem is everyone wants to stand against one to have their picture taken - so we wait for the crowds to clear before snapping away. A popular holiday area, it was much busier in this region and we started to miss the peace and quiet that we had enjoyed over the last few weeks. We overnighted in Skane at the southwest tip before heading north again to Lund, a big university town and then onto Malmo. We spend a long afternoon in Malmo before heading back out to Lund to spend the night at a camperstop we had found on the earlier visit. Remembering how much more expensive Denmark is, we filled up with diesel and exchanged the remaining currency at the System Bolaget for the Swedish cider that we had developed a taste for.
Looking back on Sweden, it would be very easy to spend the whole summer taking it easy, wandering from
place to place, just relaxing, doing a bit of fishing and cycling and generally taking it easy - its that sort of place. We managed it quite easily for six weeks and if the weather hadn’t started to turn cooler, I’m sure we probably would have stayed for a few more weeks. But with a self-imposed deadline of being in Copenhagen before the end of August, we drove over the Oresund crossing - part bridge, part tunnel linking Sweden to Denmark and emerge in Copenhagen.
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