24 July 2014 (sunny and hot) 103 km

Today’s blog does not begin early in the morning……no…..we will come back to that.

Today’s episode takes us straight to the shithole of humanity that is called…….Falkoping.

As you ride into this human dumping ground, the first thing you notice is ….that if the Japanese in 1945 had been given a choice to live here or in Hiroshima after the bomb dropped……they’d have chosen Hiroshima. Beggars……and wait for it……drunks as well….. roam the streets hitting people up for money and just generally being the pain in the arse that they are.

The tourist info. Office should be called ……..The Office Which Helps You Find Your Way Out Of Town As Fast As Possible. Yes folks….. this is the town that the rest of the world forgot about.

The cycle here was a long drawn out slog on a main road….. because, to take the minor road…..would mean spending far too much time in this neck of the woods.

Couldn't have put it better ourselves

And speaking of woods…..this area is full of them…..You’d think that was nice……but it isn’t …..when you’ve been driving into a head wind for hours on long straight roads ……that lead to Hell…!

And to say we have cycled 60km this morning…..and 58km of it was uphill….is not pulling the wool..!

Hardest thing to stomach as I write this…..is that the next 50km are probably very similar. We are aiming for a town called Skovde.  It’s well into the thirties temperature wise and it would be so nice to have even a slight change in scenery.

Ok now Pete’s got his little rant out of the way…..woke up this morning to another cloudless hot day at 7am and got stuck into breakfast before beginning to pack up.  Pete says “We better give that laundry key back before we forget” and I’m thinking “where did I put it?”  So began about twenty minutes of hunting for it and eventually I found it by the basin in the toilet block.  The good thing about this was it gave the tent time to dry so we were able to pack away a crisp, dry tent.  

A typical Swedish church of this area

Just before leaving I went and threw myself into an ice cold shower for five minutes to cool me down before hitting the road at 8.50am.  We were on a mission today to try and make up some of the lost ground of yesterday.  We may have cycled 63 km but it was probably only about 40km on

There are plenty of Volvos and Volvo factories in this country.
This afternoon's count revealed 20-30% of cars in Sweden are
Volvos.  We also passed two big factories just today.

the map.  So we chose the most direct route on a main road but were pleasantly surprised by Highway 181. 

Over the helmet photography captures the mood of the first 50km

It had a hard shoulder about two foot wide, nice smooth surface and even though there was a lot of uphill, it was a really good gradient.  We cycled through a lot of forest which offered a bit of shade but because the road was so wide, not as much as we would have liked.  It was incredibly hot again but we powered along past Herrljunga and stopped for a coke at Flobe before heading off for the final push into Falkoping.  We had planned to have a good break here but were put off by the drunks and beggars.  This whole area seems to have received a lot of refugees.  Two days ago as we left Gothenberg, we saw Somalians and Iranians and now we have some Asians and other Arabic looking people.  It must be very hard to leave your home to try and set up in a new country, especially when you look so different from the rest of the population and don’t speak their language.  I guess that’s why so many end up begging.  They have probably seen plenty of people doing it in their home country so think it’s a valid way to get money.  I prefer the people who try to do something for their money, like busking.  There was one guy playing his accordion and doing a fantastic job of it too and we had no problem handing him some money.

We struggled to find something of interest to photograph in Falkoping

Went to the supermarket for lunch ingredients then sat in the shaded churchyard eating it and trying to muster up some energy for the afternoon session.  We were both really tired and I must say were not looking forward to the afternoon haul to Skovde (pronounced Cody), however, with renewed vigour we took off and ploughed through the

Getting high enough to have a view over the countryside.

next 30km.  Found an ICA supermarket which has a great salad bar and made a huge salad each which ended up costing us $38!  Still we figured we’d earned it, as well as a cold beer each!  And that was before the slog to the campground which ended up being at the top of the ‘mountain’ as the locals call it. 

Another nice little church

But just before we got there we spied a nice field with mown grass and decided to save some money and camp there for the night.

Set up tent about 9.30pm ,backed into a patch of bush, hoping the mozzies don’t eat us alive….so far ….pretty good. Had coffee and a cake each and

A church in Skultorp

then prepared for the night. Prior to set up, we’d ridden around the immediate area and found that it’s a summer and winter playground.

At present they are holding mountain bike events, cross country runs through the wooded area, which is massive. They even have outdoor training equipment permanently set up. A timer shows people their times for runs and at 9.30pm the temperature was a humid 26°.

In winter, it’s a skiers…snowboarders ….cross country skiers, ice skaters, curlers etc paradise.  But for us tonight it was a well-earned resting place and a chance to be grateful we got out of Falkoping.