4th July 2016. Kalmar, Sweden.

Today we had to drive back to Kalmar to have the fridge repaired.  Before we left the farm at Rottne Ekna Darren went to empty the toilet cassette but the minute he got over to the other side of the farmyard the rain poured down on him, it had been sunny right up until that moment.  As he was doing such a nasty task I took his coat over to him before he was completely drowned, it stopped raining 5 minutes after he got back to the van!

On our journey we filled up with fuel and tried to find the place that sold LPG.  We drove to various petrol stations in Kalmar but none of them sold gas.  The cashier at one of the petrol stations kindly gave Darren directions to a place we could fill up the gas tanks but it was a fill up point for bio gas so we finally gave up and went to find the castle.

We had our usual faff around the city trying to get to the castle but this time it was because the road the SAT NAV wanted us to go down was closed because the railway line that ran through it was being worked on.

We had a grand tour of the roads around Kalmar due to lots of one way streets sending us the wrong way until we finally saw a parking sign for motorhomes near the castle.

It was lovely.  It was situated in the old town and looked out on some beautiful old properties.  To the right of the parking area was the sea, a nature reserve and the castle.

It was perfect, particularly as it turned out to be a ställplats as well.

Darren decided to go and ask the Swedish lady in the van next to us whether she knew where we could buy some LPG and she gave us directions.

We wandered down to the castle and looked around the outside but had to rush back to go to the garage to get the fridge fixed.

We spent quite a long time at the garage, Anders Slap and Husvagnsservice but were very grateful to him for fitting us in, we’d have been in dire straits without the fridge.

When we left there we drove to some other motorhome dealers in the hope that we could buy shower parts.

The first one couldn’t help us.  We drove round and round an industrial estate but couldn’t find the second one and the third one didn’t have the parts we needed either.  However it wasn’t all bad the dealership was under the airport flight path so I got to see the underside of an aeroplane quite closely as it flew over the building in front of me.  Unfortunately my camera had turned itself off so I only got a photo as it flew into the sun, as an added bonus there was an ice cream parlour next door so we got ourselves the customary ice cream and cup of coffee and sat at a table outside to eat it.

The LPG station turned out to be at the rastplats where Darren and I had swapped places when I’d been through my driving hell, only there weren’t any signs telling you it was there.

We discovered it accidentally when we happened to see a man come out of a little shed and saw the gas in there.

While Darren had the tanks re-filled I went for a walk around the nature reserve and took some photos of a couple of Arctic Terns sitting on the roof of a seating area over the water.

It was surprisingly quiet at the reserve considering it was right beside the busy main road.

With the tanks filled we headed back to the castle ställplats and hoped there would be room for us to stay.  Thankfully there was.

We had begun to get the bikes ready for a trip round Kalmar but when I saw the black clouds coming towards us and heard thunder, I decided we should have lunch first, we ate lunch in the van with rain pounding on the roof.

When the storm finally passed by we cycled into Kalmar, which is a very pretty city full of beautiful ornate old buildings and a big church with gold leaf in places on the roof.

The churches in Sweden are absolutely stunning.

We spent quite a long time down at the harbour which had huge piles of logs waiting to be transported and a huge sign in the water which said Kalmar.  I’m not sure quite how we managed to miss spying that on our way across the bridge from Öland!

We eventually came to the town square which had a very fancy fountain.   We found a stall where we bought waffles, ice cream and coffee which we sat and ate sitting in the last of the evening sun.

On the way back to the van we cycled along the waterfront past the Castle, watched a class of people exercising to music on the grass and through the nature reserve where lots of people were walking, cycling and jogging.