Baltic Sea Circle Day 4
We started early on day four. It had been a restless night for me, I couldn’t figure out why my sleeping bad seemed smaller in the night, my feet were jammed in the end. It was only in the light of the morning that I saw Gemma and I had switched sleeping bags and she was luxuriating in my XL bag. It did cause many giggles that morning.
We set off after coffee and some cereal, our plan to head north near Vaxjo, where there was an abandoned car junkyard. The challenge for today was to find the junkyard and within it a bus that supposedly was ABBA’s tour bus. We found the place easily and parked up, then wandered down the mud path through the pine trees. We came across cars from the 1950’s and 60’s that had been abandoned and left to rot. They were apparently too expensive to repair and hence the owners had left them at the side of the forest path in a queue. Quite spooky seeing all the chassis returning to nature. Further into the place we found the bus, in a similar state of rot. A quick photo and we hot footed back to the car. Gemma was going to drive the next leg.
A bit of seat and mirror adjusting and we set off again, heading north towards Jonkoping. Given this was only Gemma’s third time of ever driving the Porsche, she did incredibly well! I sat in the “nav seat” and did my best with the map and directions. As we approached Jonkoping we pulled into a parking lot and swapped seats again, me taking the next leg. It was a cool day and we wound through endless Swedish forest roads and small towns. The terrain was becoming more hilly and the car was noticing the inclines. Each one needed a bit of extra planning, you could tell when she wasn’t happy. We were constantly passing speed cameras and having to convert the speeds to MPH for our speedo, which isn’t that accurate anyway.
We continued north and stopped for a cup of tea at a beautiful spot near Mariestad. We navigated down a gravel track, around a few potholes, holding our breath as the suspension on the car is under a lot of load with our gear and is riding about 3” lower in the back. We crossed a railway line before arriving at a beach, where we parked up and got our kettle out for a brew. The wind off the lake was strong and we had to shield our stove as it boiled our tiny kettle.
We packed up and proceeded even further, checking out a possible wild campsite but dismissing it due to the number of cars parked up, even though it had a lovely view. We eventually stopping at a small wild camping site near Kopparberg. It seemed to be popular with wild swimmers and quite a few turned up and took a dip in the lake while we were setting up and cooking dinner, an amazing Broccoli Gnocchi!
We got our maps out and assessed how the next two weeks might play out given we are three days behind the rest of the rally teams. We planned a rough route, missing out Lofoten as it would take a lot of time getting the ferry and driving the twisty roads there. We’ll have to come back one day for that! Instead we’ll head straight to The North Cape as that was my original plan and then see how far the other teams are ahead on the way through Finland.
Once all the wild swimmers had left we climbed into our tent, this time ensuring we had the right sleeping bags!
WILD SPIRIT 