Into Sverige

Sweden is a long, skinny country that borders Norway for a long bloody way, along the Scandinavian mountain range. It's 3 times longer from north to south as it is from east to west. It was the first European country to introduce national parks, and has some very nice forest area and really nice lakes. Their most famous band would have to be The Hives and definitely not ABBA. Most Swedes will tell you that the population of Sweden is about 5 million, but I have seen it written as 9 million. I guess a lot left when ABBA started making that horrible noise, and maybe they have been slowly returning since Roxette took over.

The border between Sweden and Norway where we crossed sits on top of a small hill, showing those coming from Norway that the land ahead of them is a lot flatter than their own, and telling those coming from Sweden that they are now entering the land of the ridiculously steep mountains. Apparently this invisible line separating Sweden from Norway does nothing to change the weather.
Sverige, as the locals call it, promised many things for us. Firstly, it was the end of the mountains and the entry to the lakes. I will miss the mountains, but also I look forward to cruisier riding amongst forests and lakes. We also had dates with locals. Once again Nadia's previous travels have given her a contact in this part of the world. This time we would be visiting a friend that she made in South Africa a few years ago, a young lass by the name of Suzy. Suzy lives in Stockholm, right over in the east of Sweden which we would eventually get to, but her family lives about half way across, in the area of Storfors.

Firstly though, we had to get some maps of this all new country, with its all new language and money. The first town we came across was Tocksfors, which had a well stocked pamphlet section in the library where we were able to pick up some very nice free maps. Tocksfors was 6 km over the border, and as we rolled into town the sky opened good and proper. It absolutely bucketed down for the next 4 hours. The librarian told us of a shopping centre in town so we headed there for shelter and to waste some time waiting for the weather to ease up.
Although Tocksfors is a tiny little town, it is home to a massive shopping centre. The reason for this is the town's closeness to the Norwegian border. Sweden has a much happier purchase price on almost anything, and possibly everything. So Tocksfors is a big stopping and spending place for those heading to Norway. It took about 10 minutes to walk around the centre, and due to the weather it was busy. The shops in the centre were nothing to get excited about, containing the usual non-necessities. There was 1 shop that had on display a home penis moulding kit, which was pretty funny, but we couldn't fit it on our bikes. The only other shop of note was the biggest bloody lolly shop you will ever see. It was probably the biggest shop in the centre and had masses of big open bins full of loose lollies, and then shelves of boxes of chocolates and jubes and everything else stretching way up to the ceiling. The idea was that you pick up a bucket on the way in and just shovel all the lollies that you wanted into your own little bucket. And if you filled your bucket, no worries, as there were empty buckets everywhere. For us, we got a little bag of lollies, just for the novelty of it all.
We received many a stare after making our lunch on a bench seat in the middle of a walk way. Apparently we became the first visitors to not eat junk food in a shopping centre in all of Scandinavia judging by the looks we received. The prices were cheaper, but still not cheap enough for us to splurge.
After lunch was done and browsing was finished, it was still a long wait until the rain started to back off. We were running out of riding time so we went for it and managed to put another 20km behind us and leave the main road far behind. Our travelling theory was the same: take the backroads and camp in the wilds, and maybe if we were lucky we might get invited in by kind hearted locals. And one of the keys to the getting invited in thing was the getting lost thing. As it was our first night in a new country we figured we should see if it would work in Sweden, and it did. Hooraa! After finding that a few roads didn't appear on our map we were stopped at an intersection with not much about. There had been no rain now for about half an hour, and after a few minutes of map checking we looked up to see an old fellow walking up the sideroad towards us. He greeted us with an energetic sentence of gobbledigook before we were able to explain our situation. As we had found in Norway, his English was decent, and he was able to explain that he was visiting friends just down the road, so he didn't know the area, but his wife and local friend would be along in a minute. When Ulla, the local lady arrived there was confusion over the map, but then a deal was struck that we would accompany them back to the house where her husband Per would be able to help us. On the way to the house it started pissing down again, so we were told 'hop on your bikes and ride to the yellow house up ahead on the left. When you arrive just go in and tell my husband what is happening.' So that is what we did. We had parked our bikes in various out of the weather spots around the end of the house when a confused looking man came out. He took it all in his stride and had us strip our wet gear off and come in for a cuppa.
Once settled we were introduced to the daughter Elin, then they made us sit down for a coffee and completely relax whilst they put on the fire and filled the table with pie and chocolate and homemade pie and beer and homemade blueberry pie and coffee and sweetbread. It was more than we could have asked for and they kept giving willingly, happy to see us warm and happy and to hear of our travels. As it was still belting down outside we were invited to stay for the night, which we gratefully accepted. A little while later the rain stopped, so Per took us for a walk up the back track into the woods and told us of the area and his family's history in the area. It started to rain again whilst we were walking, so it was a quick turn around and back home for a bottle of wine and more chocolate. We were shown our rooms later and were very happy to see an actual bed, which was soft and amazing. During the night I woke and had to visit the toilet after all the amazing food, but I would do it all again.
The visit was topped off with a huge breakfast the next morning before they waved us off. Talking together later and pooling all the info, we had learned that Ulla's mother had died a month before, and Per was out of work. We were also told that this was officially the wettest summer in Sweden for 50 years. So, it was a shit summer all around, but still they took us in and treated us like life long friends. I am so pleased to have met these people, but nearly feel guilty for accepting so much hospitality during their tough times. I hope that our visit somehow lifted their spirits and gave them something to laugh about. And I hope I get to repay their hospitality somewhere down the line.
The only problem now was, at this had been our first night in Sweden, we had big expectations for the rest of the country.

An eye opening comment from our new friends as we were leaving was that one of the towns that we would come across later in the day (about the distance we would have made it if we hadn't been invited to stay the night) had been hit with a small cyclone overnight!
After our big traditional Swedish breakfast we finally got going at 11.30. For the first while we had a tailwind pushing us along on our north easterly path, passing through countryside made up of small farms with horses and sheep. It didn't take long for an hour to slip past with us gently riding along, chatting and watching the country roll by. After this hour we came to a stop to check the maps, with a bit of contention as to how far we had moved on the map. This was resolved with Jon turning right onto a dirt road that he believed would be a short cut to the next town, and with Nadia and I continuing on the sealed road that we knew would take us to the next town. We agreed to meet at Arvika for lunch and headed along our chosen roads. It would have only been 5 minutes later that Nadia and I arrived at a major intersection and knew exactly where we were, and exactly where Jon wasn't. I toyed with the idea of racing back to grab Jon, but he would've been having fun on his dirt road, so I left him to it. We made it to town and found some benches to sit and prepare our lunch. Jon arrived half an hour later, very happy with his adventure.
The supermarket in this town also became our shelter for an hour as the rain came down again, but thankfully this was to be the last of the rain for the next few days. We made the most of this dry afternoon by putting 74km on the clock for the day. Our campsite was planned for a little beach on the banks of a small lake. It was easy to find the lake but proved more difficult to find the beach, and the local holiday house owners were not very welcoming or helpful. But perseverance proved enough and we had a very relaxing night on our own little beach on the banks of the lake. That evening while Jon worked on cleaning his bike and Nadia picked some blueberries, I let the colourful sunset help ease my tired muscles.