Day Fifteen: Stora Kullhög Beach – Kivik – Karlshamn
We reached Kivik quite late on Thursday afternoon as we were enjoying staying by the beach so much. Both Reece and I really like Swedish cider, so my friend recommended the Kivik Musteri to us so we could see where one of the most popular Swedish ciders comes from. It was really interesting to see how all the cider and apple juices are made on such a huge scale, and also how the technique has changed over hundreds of years. Due to the law in Sweden where you can only buy alcohol in one store, Systembolaget (The System), we couldn’t actually purchase any cider from the brewery, so we just bought some very tasty apple juice instead.
In between the heavy downpours of rain, we had a quick look around Stenshuvuds National Park, which had some gorgeous pine trees and sweet, docile cows. After a little walk, we headed to Jenny’s house who lives just on the outskirts of Karlshamn, which was around a 2 hour drive away from the national park.
It was so lovely to be welcomed with open arms, dinner cooked for us, great conversation and cats to cuddle! We even had a bed to sleep in, which was a welcome relief from the camper, which had got pretty soggy and muddy from all the rain.
Day Sixteen: Karlshamn
After a great nights sleep, we planned to explore the area by bike as there was a huge lake around ten-minutes away by foot which we’d had a brief look at the evening before. After making breakfast and having a (hot!!) shower, we went to get on the ones and go for a ride. Unfortunately, that didn’t go quite to plan, having not ridden a bike in around eight-years, I was a little out of practice and all the bikes I’d had previously had allowed me to keep a foot on the floor whilst still being on the seat. That wasn’t the case with this one and I simply couldn’t coordinate pushing off, cycling, balancing and getting on the seat all in one go, so after a good fifteen minutes of Reece desperately trying to teach me, I gave up and decided that a cat cuddle would actually be nicer anyway.
So as Reece went off on his bike ride the heavens once again opened, so I wasn’t too upset that I was inside pottering around tidying the kitchen and sorting out our laundry, until Reece sent me a message saying that he was having the best lunch ever in a vegetarian buffet with all fresh, homemade food in the middle of a forest. I almost jumped in the van and drove there myself, but as I was deliberating, Jenny came back from work early! She’d unfortunately come back because she could feel a migraine starting, but we still had a good chat whilst Reece made his way back from the restaurant in even more rain.
Reece and I then nipped out to the centre of Karlshamn as he has never seen the little seaside city before, I had been three-years prior when I came to visit Jenny before.
After visiting Karlshamn and picking up some cava and wine from ‘The System’, we came back, watched some Stranger Things on Netflix and then me, Jenny and Reece got ready to go to the sauna, which we had planned the day before. I have only ever visited the sauna in the gym and never really understood the appeal, but I was willing to give this sauna a try as it was part of both Swedish and Finnish culture. I’m so pleased I did, it was so revitilising! We did it the proper Swedish way, nude, and it was a strange feeling getting so warm that you cannot bear it, running down some forest steps, then across a little pier, down a ladder and straight into the cool lake. And what a beautiful lake it was, clear water surrounded by an array of different trees and foliage.
We then came back, made dinner and talked ’till the early hours.
Day Seventeen: Karlshamn – Hossmo
We had a relaxed Saturday morning, sleeping and eating a delicious breakfast Jenny and her husband Roger had made for us. We then went for a walk around a little island off the port of Karlshamn, which had an unusual landscape of flat rocks, an abundance of heather and a forest. It was a really lovely walk with the chance to eat some wild blueberries and learn about the different berries and mushrooms we could safely pick and eat on any future walks in Sweden.
After the walk round the island, we packed up all our stuff, filled up our water tub and got back on the road, with a stop at the vegetarian buffet of course (which I was not at all disappointed by). We were heading towards Öland, a large island off the east coast of Sweden.
We stayed just outside the island on another beach by the sea, with quite a few other campers near us – and nice toilets!
Day Eighteen: Hossmo – Öland – Ringarum
After a morning of walking around the beach and little piers where you could go for a swim, we did some yoga on the beach before having breakfast, packing up and heading to Öland.
On the way there, we went over some really impressive bridges, which unusually were toll free. The island itself was motorhome heaven, every other car must have been a motorhome or camper, which was different to the other roads we’d been driving on in Sweden where seeing a fellow camper on the roads is far and few between. The island itself was nice, but the road that goes around the island wasn’t the most interesting, bar the really old, quirky windmills we kept passing by. We had planned to go in the castle, but it was quite expensive and it didn’t look all that impressive, so instead we followed the hiking trail that ran around it, which took us to a cute little beach and through a forest where we spotted a woodpecker.
We wanted to get further towards Stockholm for the evening, so we we hopped in the van and drove north towards a lake we’d found on Park4Night. The drive was beautiful, past sheer rocks, forests and so many lakes. When we reached the place we were staying for the night, it looked nice, but a little dreary in the pouring rain, so we simply cooked dinner and stayed in for the evening.
Day Nineteen: Ringarum – Stockholm
We woke up to glorious sunshine, and the place reflected in the glory. The lake was stunning, with pine trees all around and, again, it was so clear, we could even see pretty big fish scuttling around near the shore. We even had our own small forest with some beautiful colours in the trees on the floor, with different mosses, leaves and heathers.
After breakfast, we went for a swim and both of us were surprised to find that the water was actually pretty warm. It felt so special to be able to swim in such an amazing place with the sun pouring down us. We spent the rest of the morning sunbathing and letting our towells dry, with the solar panel charging our electrics.
After we were dry, we went for a walk around the area. We had parked near a small lake, but there was an even bigger lake nearby, so we had a walk over to that one. The views were amazing, and it was all set up for campers with shelters, dry wood for a fire and even tables and chairs right next to the lake.
We took a walk through some fields and pretty dense forest, keeping an eye out for berries and mushrooms. To our surprise, we actually came across some chanterelles, the golden mushrooms of the forest, which are very distinct in their appearance, almost like a trumpet or a flower, which makes them pretty safe to eat as there’s not really any poisonous mushrooms that look the same. As we continued further round the lake, the views just got better and better, although the terrain did get more difficult to walk through.
As we were heading back from our walk from the lake, we picked the chanterelles and took them with us.
As we were prepping the chanterelles for lunch, a Swiss couple pulled up in their camper and we talked a little bit, and when they noticed the mushrooms, they were really eager to know where we foraged them and then set off in search of their own!
After lunch, we packed everything up and headed to Stockholm, which was around three hours away. I had found a car park we could stay overnight, so we headed towards the city.
Stockholm was huge and very built up, with high blocks of flats, but the most impressive structures were the huge bridges for the trains and trams, which towered high above us, and even the neighbouring buildings. We carefully googled the cheapest veggie food in Stockholm, which led us to a restaurant called ‘Faloumi’, which was still €9/£9 for a falafel and halloumi wrap! But as we walked round to see the average meal in a restaurant is around €18/£18 and a beer, which is their cheapest drink as usual, is €10/£10 a pint, it didn’t seem all that bad. The rest of the evening was spent simply walking into Gamla Stan, the old town, which took us around 40 minutes, so by then we fancied a sit-down and a medieval basement pub caught our eye. Since beer was off the menu in Stockholm, we simply got some non-alcoholic mead which was actually really tasty and just a fraction of the price.
After leaving the medieval bar, back to modern Stockholm, we realised we had walked almost an hour away from the van. The smart thing to do would have been getting the metro home, but the electric scooters were calling us, so we grabbed one each and zoomed pretty much all the way home.
Day Twenty: Stockholm – Aspen Lake (Julita)
We went back into the city in the morning, we had planned to eat breakfast in the van, but as we had been in stealth mode the night before, the van was a mess and we could barely sit down, never mind make breakfast, so we headed to Lidl to get some pastries and cold pizza to eat for breakfast and lunch, coming to a total of €5 for both of us!
The city was beautiful in the day, the sun had come out, and it was shining in all its pastel colours. Again, we headed north to the old town, we had parked our van in the south, but this time we ventured further in and it was so pretty. Cobbled stones, brightly coloured houses, spires, winding streets and large squares.
We then headed even further north, over another bridge and into the more commercial side of Stockholm. It was interesting to see the contrast of the North and South, with the old town bridging the two in the middle. Here were the huge tv screens, bustling streets filled with shoppers and business staff. We did spot a group of five police horses grazing under the shade of some trees in one of the main squares which was really lovely to see.
After walking around for around the North for around an hour, we were pretty tired, so we got the metro home, as we were now an hour and a half walk away from the van, and set off in search of another lake.
After a bit of exploring in the van attempting to find our own spot for the night, we resorted back to using Park4Night and found ourselves by a lake called Aspen with a little beach and set up camp there. A couple of campers joined us, a couple from Flensburg in Germany where we had stopped before heading into Denmark, and an older lady from Sweden with two ex-sledge dogs, Alaskan Huskies, who was travelling around in her micro-camper with a dream to one day move to Scotland.
Day Twenty-One: Aspen Lake – Vänern Lake (Kristinehamn)
The other two campers left early, so again we had the woods and a lake to ourselves. Both of us had planned to go in the lake, but the weather had turned, and the lake didn’t look as appealing as the last, with pond skaters and a slightly musty appearance. Instead, we had a movie morning inside, pulling the bed back down after breakfast and watching movies in bed. A nice relaxing morning after being busy the last few days. We then had lunch, packed up, and headed to the next lake.
We had planned to visit Gothenburg, which is to the south-west of Sweden, but as our ultimate aim was northern Sweden and Norway and to spend as much time in nature as we could in Scandinavia, we changed our plans last minute and we are now instead heading towards Oslo in Norway. So rather than heading south again, we went north of the largest lake in Sweden, lake Vänern, around ten minutes away from the town of Kristinehamn. As we pulled up the place yesterday evening, we were taken aback by just how huge the lake is. It looks like a sea, and as it was windy yesterday, it even had waves like a sea too.
Last night, we cooked dinner using up the last of our groceries from Germany, and went for a walk in the setting sun. There are quite a few campers near us, dotted around the lakeshore and in the woods, but we’ve managed to find a little cove for Papaya. As we were walking, we spotted a couple of blueberries, which we picked and ate (they’re sooo sweet and tasty), and as we looked around, we realised the whole forest floor was covered in blueberry bushes and loads and loads of blueberries. So we quickly went back to the camper, grabbed our colander, and got picking! It was gorgeous to watch the sunset as we were picking wild blueberries.
We will have the fresh blueberries on our breakfast this morning, which usually consists of an apple, banana, peanut butter, muesli and apple juice all mixed together – which tastes a lot nicer then it sounds.
Today, we plan to head a little further around the lake in search of a sauna and somewhere to shower, buy groceries then drive in the direction of Norway.
Beyond Horizons 