11th July 2016. Sandviken, Sweden.
We left Klubbensborg in the morning but not before Darren saw two deer run through the woods beside the van while we were eating breakfast. We’re having a dash to Northern Norway now because we’re running out of time to see the midnight sun.
Our departure didn’t get off to a very good start we had to pull into the lay-by just outside the site gates because a light had appeared on the dashboard and we couldn’t work out what it meant.
It turns out it was telling us that a headlight was out!
Once we left Klubbensborg we had to go to another motorhome dealer to ask for some advice about the shower so instead of going to Gripsholm castle and up the route we’d planned to take to Falun we ended up driving North with the intention of staying in Gävle.
The mechanic at the Frankia dealer in Stockholm looked at the fault and said they couldn’t fix it today. Darren asked about getting the spare parts so he could do it himself later.
It turns out the dealer didn’t have a parts list because they have to photograph the parts they want and send them to Frankia who then send the parts four or five weeks later! So we had to give up.
After he’d gone back into the workshop Darren tried to open the bonnet to change the ‘bulb’ in the headlamp only we couldn’t find the latch to open it so he had to go back into the workshop and persuade another mechanic to show him how to open it! I don’t think we were very popular.
We arrived at the parking place in Gävle in the pouring rain, it was full of motorhomes and although we found a space we decided that we didn’t want to stay in a busy city (we hadn’t realised Gävle was so big before we got there) so we had a coffee then carried on driving on the road to Falun until we came to a place called Sandviken where we’d seen a couple of ställplats on a map which looked like they were by a lake. As we entered the area Darren offered to stop the van so that I could take some photographs, it was absolutely stunning.
After driving backwards and forwards several times along the same road (because we’d missed the entrance to the ställplats, Hedåsbadet, and then assumed it wasn’t the one we were looking for) we eventually found the entrance. Wow! What a find!
