Having escaped the “Butlins” of Orebo we headed back to nature to Tividens national park for a good 8km hike around a beautiful lake. There are toilets (long drop), camping spots and BBQs & fire pits, really geared up for hikers. We free camped in the forest near (another) lake and spent 2 hours sat in silence with our binoculars hoping to spot a moose - to no avail.. Next stop was Läckö Slot (castle), our favourite so far. Läckö Slot is a 800 year old castle on a peninsula into Vänern lake, a fab spot with a lovely wooded campsite. We really enjoyed a guided tour of the castle with descriptions of pies with live birds in and fruit modelled from fish flesh to amuse the feasters at castle banquets. The beds were particularly short as nobles slept sat up to prevent the mixing of bodily fluids. Leading medical knowledge of the time was that lying down allowed the fluids; blood, mucus, white bile and black bile to mix and cause illnesses.

Then off to Trollhatan to watch the daily release of water from the reservoir at 300000 litres per minute. Awesome how the river goes from dry to raging in less than a minute and then back to dry after only a few more. The release of water is to balance the reservoir against the hydropower plant’s usage.

Then a short drive took us to a Gothenburg, Sweden’s second city. We spent an hour in a traffic jam in the city and had to pay a congestion charge for the pleasure. We chose a campsite outside the city with a good train link to the city centre. The campsite is probably the scruffiest we’ve stayed at and had a lot of permanent caravans and “fringe” people.

We really enjoyed Gothenburg with its rich architecture and two festivals, a culture festival and a music festival. The culture festival was very Swedish with choirs and bands singing folk music. There was a lot of Swedish food and environmental stalls. However, we came across a fish and chip van from South Shields! We enjoyed a boat trip around the canals under some very low bridges where we all had to duck.

We managed to get day tickets for the music festival “Way Out West” which was headlined by The Cure, One of C’s favourite bands of the 80’s. The festival was well managed with two large stages at each end of the main arena that had alternate entertainment meaning almost no pause in the lineup. The lineup included; Daniel Norgren, 60’s American blues - very good; Pharoah Sanders, jazz jamming - bit tedious; Veronica Maggio, Swedish pop - very popular; Seinabo Sey, powerful voiced R&B - good but wouldn’t buy it and some awful hip hop DJs. The Cure were on top form and as it’s a small festival compared to the UK we were almost close enough to touch Robert Smith, well to see how much the band had aged anyway. Great day. There was a lot of marketing at the festival meaning we ate free food, no free beer sadly.
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