23rd August 2016. Gothenburg, Sweden.

We got up reasonably early and I edited and uploaded some more photos then we got our bikes ready to cycle into Gothenburg.  When I got my walking shoes out of the ‘floordrobe’.  They where still covered in cement from our stroll down a lane in Sunne where some builders where flushing their cementy water down the hill.

It was a lovely route into the city and only 6 km away.  It was mostly downhill (in fact there was an exceptionally steep and very long hill from the entrance of the ställplats which was wonderful to freewheel down even though at the back of my mind there was a tiny niggle that this hill was going to be there to greet me at the end of the day).  I’m beginning to see a pattern emerging here, it seems that every time we’ve cycled somewhere we have to cycle up a hill to get back to the van, VERY poor planning!

When we arrived Darren went into the Tourist Information Bureau which was situated in the middle of the shopping mall and the lady told him not to bother with the Hop On Hop Off bus because it wasn’t very regular now that the season was over and Gothenburg wasn’t that big.  Instead she gave him a map which showed a walking tour.

In the meantime I’d noticed that over the road there was a vegetarian restaurant so we went in there and had a tasty buffet meal for 95 Kr (£7.98) which included refillable coffee (wouldn’t get that at home).

While we were looking out of the window Darren saw a number of people walking into the shopping centre carrying guitars, he was hoping to see someone when we came out of the restaurant to ask directions to a guitar shop however there were no guitars anywhere to be seen when we walked back to our bikes.

While the bikes were still chained up we decided to go into the shopping mall to get the toothpaste we’ve been meaning to get for a week and also see whether there was a music shop in there.

We were pleased when we found an interactive notice board and then had fun pressing the buttons of the words that looked like pharmacy and music.  The position of the required shops popped on the board, which was handy but it was even more handy when we noticed the Union Jack on the bottom of the board, it’s a shame we didn’t have the sense to see whether they had one of those to start with, but where’s the fun in that.

The ‘music’ shop looked very much like a department store so we just went straight to the pharmacy, bought the toothpaste and asked whether there was somewhere I could buy hair dye, the assistant directed me to the department store.  As we appeared to be on a roll we then asked whether there a music shop nearby.  The girls behind the counter told us there was one a few stops away on the bus so we decided to give that one a miss and wandered over to the department store which had the usual over priced make-up department on the ground floor and a perfume section where the combination of scents was over powering.  We found the hair dressing department right at the back of the shop.

Blimey O’Riley!  I had no idea there were SO many hair products available.  We wandered around like lost souls looking through hundreds of boxes of hair dyes, and the paints and powders to colour in roots along with shampoos and conditioners.  I was hoping to find a conditioner that didn’t need washing out but I’d lost the will to live by the time we started looking for that so we bought the powder to colour my roots (that’ll save having to muck around with hair dye for a while) and as we walked to the counter a tube of mascara found its way into my basket!

Once we’d unchained the padlock (we’d spent a good 10 minutes trying to remember the code when we padlocked them up) we followed the map to the various points of interest marked on it.   Our first stop was the Opera House which had an unusual piece of modern architecture opposite it and an interesting sculpture.

We carried on to what used to be the Town Hall which was the oldest building in the city, it was a lovely building.  As we left to go to the next point Darren caught sight of a teenager with a guitar case and he cycled over to ask him whether there was a guitar shop nearby.

The boy gave him directions which had us do an ‘about turn’ and pedal off in the opposite direction to the way we had been going.

It gave us a chance to explore a different part of the city that we wouldn’t have gone to otherwise.

On the way back we took a few photos of a lock (sluss) from a bridge which had beautiful flower arrangements on it and we cycled back along the canal, which was very pretty, people were relaxing in the sun on the grass beside the canal.

Our last stop was the theatre with a large, ugly statue of Poseidon in front of it.  Luckily for Darren the road up to it had an ice cream shop so we stopped for coffee and ice cream to give us the energy to cycle back to the ställplats (well that’s our excuse and we’re sticking to it!)

Gothenburg didn’t have many sights to look at but it was a really lovely city, ideal for cycling around with all the cycle paths (there were bikes to rent) in various places around the city.

On our way out of Gothenburg the cycle path took us past a dinosaur and through Liseberg the amusement park.  From our side of the fence the gardens inside looked lovely.  We’re pleased we went into Gothenburg after all, we thoroughly enjoyed our visit, it was the perfect size to cycle round.

We pushed the bikes back up the very long hill and by the time we reached the van we were sweating buckets.  After we’d drunk a lot of water and sat down for a while I resized and uploaded some more photos.

At 6 p.m. we drove off to our next stop which was at a ställplats at Ullared.  The landscape, once we’d left the main road, was mainly beech woodland, I wonder whether they have bluebells in them in the Springtime.  Yet again we saw something we weren’t expecting to see, every so often at the side of the road which was in the middle of nowhere there were posters advertising Michael Bolton.  I tried to take a photo to show my friend Jayne, she’s a big fan of his, but the posters were so intermittent my camera kept turning itself off!

I was pleasantly surprised when we arrived at the second ställplats.  The first one had been a very big campsite behind the car park at Gekås, the supermarket in Ullared.  The second ställplats had a large parking area but the motorhomes and caravans were well spread out.

There was a pine forest on two sides and a hedge along the side by the road.  It was reasonably cheap and there were all the facilities we needed.  People were sitting outside their vans in the sun when we arrived.  We parked right down the end beside the forest where we had an extremely quiet night.