12th July 2016. Sandviken, Sweden.

It was a lovely day, the sun was glistening on the lake and there were people swimming.

We watched the owner of the restaurant arrive at the jetty in his little boat then do a few journeys along the jetty with containers that he filled with drinking water and placed back in his boat.

We went to the restaurant for coffee and cake, homemade by the co-owner, the man’s daughter.  The owner thought he’d seen me swimming earlier, I told him it definitely wasn’t me.

We’d watched a mother and her daughter trying to pluck up the courage to jump in earlier in the morning, they held hands and almost jumped in a few times (the daughter was hanging back, we were certain she was going to let go when her mum finally jumped in, but she didn’t) when they did eventually jump in one of them gave a huge scream as they hit the water.  The restaurant owner said the water was 18°c, no wonder they screamed, I’m surprised they didn’t have a heart attack!  A while later we saw three boys having the time of their lives trying to push each other into the cold water.

We returned later for a very late lunch and his daughter kindly explained the menu to us.  She made me a halloumi burger and Darren had a homemade beefburger.  They were gorgeous and the homemade sauce that was with them was extremely tasty.  She told us that she had moved to Norway for a few years while she was working in the film industry but had recently returned home with her partner and she and her dad had set up the restaurant, they rented the building from the community.

She’s a superb cook.  She said her dad lives on one of the small islands in the lake which is why he was filling the canisters with water.  It was so beautiful here that we decided to stay for a second night.

In the evening we went for a walk through the woods and along the beach.  We’re in awe of the people we’ve seen jogging and walking their dogs around these woods in the evenings because when I stopped to take a couple of photographs of the only bird we could hear singing (I was hoping it was going to be an exciting bird) we were set upon by mossies so we scooted off to the beach because there were less mossies there.