16th August 2016. Upperud, Sweden.
We spent the day editing photos and writing emails. We left quite late to drive to the Dalsland Visitors Centre. The Dalsland area is extremely pretty with craggy rock hills and a landscape changing from pine forests (I don’t think they were ‘Springsteens’) to rolling hills and farmland dotted with lakes and the occasional industrial area.
We drove down a very windy and hilly road which seemed to go on forever (rather like my blog) until we came to the harbour at Upperud beside Lake Vänern. It wasn’t very big but it had quite a few motorhomes parked there. We weren’t sure about where to park, it all looked a bit haphazard, we saw a sign by the electric hook ups that looked like it said you could only park there if you’d reserved a pitch so we went to park between the two motorhomes that were by the waters edge. The first motorhomer decided that he didn’t want us parked next to him so he quickly moved his chairs to take up the space we were going to drive into. Darren reversed back and parked in between his neighbour and the car next to him. His neighbour must have wondered why we had chosen the smaller of the two spaces to park in although he was chatting to his neighbour later in the evening so hopefully he noticed the chairs and table that were spread out and realised that’s why we ended up where we did.
As I made dinner I watched loads of swallows flying in and around the trees. When we’d eaten we took a flask of coffee (and bar of chocolate, naturally) down to a table beside the water where we watched the ‘tree’ swallows skimming over the water. Every so often they would quickly dip their beaks in the water leaving a ring of ripples. In the inlet on the other side of the water two little rowing boats were being paddled along sedately.
A cute bird posed for us.
In the evening we watched as the sun set and a full moon shone on the water.