The Swedish heartlands is where most of the wildlife is. There are bears, beavers, badgers, foxes, moose, deer, lynx, wolves and even Wolverine. The chances of seeing the last three are almost zero. There are believed to be about 250 wolves, 200 wolverines and very few lynx. But it’s good to think they are here in the deep forest. And lots of bird life.

We hired a canoe for a day at Skinnskatteberg and enjoyed paddling around a huge lake and stopping off at small islands to enjoy the scenery & peace & quiet. Vanda spotted an Osprey nest on a small islet and we spent half an hour watching the birds, nobody else there, lovely.

Whilst we’ve visited some tourist info offices, they only have a few leaflets on local attractions - they don’t book trips. It’s expected that you do your own research & book on-line. So, after the success with the bears we signed up for a beaver safari and received confirmation by email with details of a meeting place. The meeting arrangements were a bit vague, but we had to trust Sally (satnav) who took us to a very posh Manor House with a spa (& Vanda got excited!) where Ely the young Swedish guide found us & took us to the nearby river to meet the rest of our group - Olivier & his 5 year old son Rafael from France, and a British family from Lincolnshire - the 1st brits we’ve met since we left home!

We went out on 2 boats - to a small island initially where they showed us how to light a fire using thin pieces of birch bark as the tinder, due to the highly flammable oil it contains, and a steel & flint lighter. We enjoyed a picnic, local beer & tea, as we watched the sun go down. Then we set out on the electrically driven dinghies that were almost silent to spot beavers - we saw two, one of them was carrying a branch home for supper and watched them for quite a while before they realised we were there. They slap their tail hard on the water as an alarm call when they see us, and dive under the water, and in the tranquility of the river it really made us jump. Amazing to see them so close up..

There are moose warning signs regularly on the road so we decided they can’t be that hard to spot. After some research on how to spot them, we set off just before dusk driving around the forest roads. The roads are gravel and we thought we’d scare any moose away but just as we rounded a corner one strolled across the road ahead. Sadly that was our only sighting for two evenings and about 4 hours driving around. So, we joined a moose safari. We started with a picnic in the woods, V had moose meat for the whole experience. Our guide showed us signs of the moose; poo, prints etc. But it was a case of him driving us around in his minibus in the dark with a big torch spotting them, we saw 12 in all. They seem to raid farmers fields at night to eat crops. There is a Moose hunt here, people “beat” through the woods to wake and scare the moose into moving to areas where the hunters sit in little towers and shoot the moose as they run past. Not much of a hunt to my thinking. However, in the absence of wolves the moose population has to be controlled.

We drove through Kopparberg, the home of the famous fruit cider, Vanda got excited but there was no visitor centre or free tasters.

We have done a lot of free camping in this area, on the edges of lakes in beautiful settings. Some areas seem to have unofficial “caretakers” who have been there a long time and like to check you out. None of those we spoke to have seen UK campers before and want to know if it’s easy driving while sat on the wrong side of the van.

We visited a boat yard where a group have reproduced a lot of Viking and medieval ships and boats, all free to wander around and climb over. Very interesting morning but it took about two hours to find! It seems they make their money selling ice cream to overheated tourists.

After a few days of free camping and enjoying exploring the forests and lakes, we need to use a proper campsite so that we can do washing, get fresh water, drain grey water and empty the toilet, the toils of a life on the road. So we checked into a site at Örebro. A huge site that has everything we need and a lot we don’t; entertainment, crazy golf, restaurant, go carts, petting farm, shop, ditto train....It was a bit of a culture shock for us!! And the most expensive site we have stayed in at £50 a night. It was, however, perfectly placed to visit the town and its excellent open air museum of the original town buildings. When the town was modernised in the 1960’s they had the forethought to relocate the most historically important buildings into a park. It’s really well done and very interesting. The other thing the campsite has is a huge water park with a full Olympic sized swimming pool. We spent a rainy morning there and managed to swim 1000 m each. That was the longest swimming award C got as a kid.