Spent a morning at an orchard, tour of the orchard and the juice and cider factory. Bought some low-alcohol cider (you have to go to a liquor shop to buy the hard stuff - over 3.5%!) and juice. Trouble with the Swedish language is we can’t understand it which meant we actually bought cider and a litre of apple sauce! Have now got a translation app, to try & avoid other mistakes.. Also visited an Iron Age burial site, a huge pile of stone over a tomb room with impressive carved stone slabs.

Then onward to Kalmar, driving through open farm land on country roads. We found a free parking site right next to Kalmar Castle which is very close to the town, just a 15 walk through the park. Nice town with lots of merchants type houses, now converted into shops, restaurants and bars with apartments above. Found a great restaurant and treated ourselves to a lovely meal and a bottle of wine. The next morning we took the tour of Kalmar Slott, a castle built in the 1200’s as a fortress. Then modified to become a palace, allowed to deteriorate to become a grain store and now renovated to a castle/palace. The royalty that used the various castles around the country used to move in with their entourage and live it up on the locally collected taxes. Once the last of the taxes were spent, they packed up and moved onto the next castle where more taxes were stored in a treasury. They travelled with all of their furniture, staff, horses, etc.

From Kalmar we moved on to the island of Oland ,Sweden’s second largest island, connected to the mainland by a 6 km toll free bridge. We stayed at a campsite on the East coast, lovely friendly people who told us that the camping fees had just reduced as the summer season is finished. It’s the fifteenth of August! It’s a tourist hotspot, for Swedes, but as it’s low season, it wasn’t very busy. The island is very flat and the south east part is made of limestone (alvar) with very little soil so very little grows, and there are few trees to protect you from the strong winds that blow in from the Baltic Sea.

Spent three days on Oland spotting seals, visiting more stone ships and Iron Age graves. We visited a reconstructed stone fort, Eketorp Borg, originally built 400-700AD. There are lots of windmills here, approx 450 of them. Just about every farm had a windmill and although they haven’t been used since the Second World War many remain. They are small structures with their original workings and grind stones sat idle next to roads and farms. Very picturesque. We also visited a small nature reserve to visit 1000 year old oak trees - although most of them were dead! But they provide a habitat for a rare beatle.. We enjoyed the laid back atmosphere of Oland - maybe because it was an island & reminded us of home! ( but without the bridge!!)

Next was a long days drive back to the mainland and onto Nässjö where we were due to pick up Heidi and Max who are joining us on the next part of our adventure!