13th July 2016. En route to Norway. Stopover beside lake at Norrbobyn, Sweden.

We’re trying to do a four hour drive between overnight stops.  We had intended only staying one night at Sandviken but it was far too beautiful not to spend a whole day there. The restaurant owner’s daughter had suggested we visited Högbo Bruk so we popped in there on our way out of Sandviken, we parked and had a quick look at the info board and decided we’d better continue on our journey North.

If we’d had more time it would have been a lovely place to visit.  It’s a managed historical area with beautiful old houses and tended gardens, the staff were dressed in period clothing from the 1800’s.  I would love to know what was going on around the restaurant, we watched a couple of men running in and out of the front door to the restaurant in a slapstick kind of way, they were dressed in World War II army uniforms, they looked like they were having a great time, there were other people dressed in uniform round the side of the building.  Whatever they were doing appeared to be very tongue in cheek.

We drove to Bollnäs where we stopped for a coffee break.  The town was very busy but we parked up by the small marina which was very pretty.

We wandered out on the breakwater, there was a large casting of a goat’s head on a podium at the end of the breakwater so we picked our way through the goose poo and ventured down to the end where Darren noticed a rather unusual boat, it was made from a caravan.  I thought he was saying that boats are like caravans on water (like the Swiss lady had said to me in Zwolle) so I hadn’t expected to see an actual caravan on the water, sheer genius!

We drove on to a wild camping place beside South Dellen Lake near Norrbobyn.  We were hoping to stay if there was space and if it was pretty.  It was both of those things, and more, when we arrived there.  It was a small and pretty picnic spot beside a lake called Southern Dellen.  Apparently there are two lakes in the system which is in Hälsingland, the other lake is called Northern Dellen.

There was a Wagtail hopping on and off the picnic table, he was getting very excited.  I thought he had a beak full of feathers but when I looked at the photos I’d taken of him it turned out that he actually had a beak full of insects, he’d obviously been very busy.

We sat at the picnic table with our coffee and a snack and enjoyed the view.  A car turned up and a man got out and wandered over to the far side of the picnic spot where he changed into his swimming trunks and had a short swim, how on earth he managed to get over the rocks to the water is a mystery, he got dried, dressed and drove off and did all that in a 15 minute time frame, speedy!

A while later a couple of people arrived, sat at one of the picnic tables for a short while then left so we had the place to ourselves for a long time.  It was very quiet, the only sound was the lapping of the water on the rocks and the birds cheeping (even I was quiet which is most unusual!).  In the late evening another motorhome arrived.  The driver was a Swedish man who looked like he was in his 70’s, he had a short walk along by the water and then he climbed back into his van for the evening.