25 July 2014 (hot and sunny) 113 km

Woke this morning at 5.30am tucked away in our secluded little spot, just down the road from the very nice looking …First Hotel….and further along from the campsite, which we were heading for until we found this little jewel.

No disturbances throughout the night [which does make a change ] and woke to a quiet early morn.

It seems people here go until the late hours and don’t really get going in the morning until 9 or 10am. Our target today was Karlsborg on the western side of lake Vattern. From here it was a trip on the ferry to Motola on the eastern side.

Down the huge hill we finished on last night and straight onto the road we were after. Powered away for the next 75mins racking up 23km on flat to slow gradient uphills.

Breakfast spot today and look Tria, Pete doing yoga stretches!

On the outskirts of Tibro, we spied a bench seat with roof and pulled in for breakfast. Very enjoyable too and now Karlsborg awaited. The sun even now at 8.40am was very fierce, but off we went.

Plenty of traffic on the road now, so not as comfortable as the first part, but at a small beach resort called Rendsberg we went in for a swim, from the jetty. BEAUTIFUL…!

Rendsberg - they have to make the jettys this long to find
deep water!

Spoke to a guy who owns a cottage and he suggested we visit the town of Yo.  I asked him how you spelled that as these Swedish always throw at least one unnecessary j or g into a word, and this guy says “I love you”.  I thought that was a bit premature, we’d only just met, but whatever, as long as he didn’t want to show me his wee wee.  Then he says H, J, O, that’s how you spell it.  I assume that’s also how they spell I love you, or some abbreviation meaning that.  I asked him where Hjo was and he said it was about 15km back the way we’d just come.  Not even the promise of a Magnum ice-cream could make me cycle back 15km from the direction we’d just come so we said we’d have to leave it until next time.  He also told us of the best beach in the area, also down by Hjo and said the bathing is fantastic.  You can walk for miles and the water only comes up to your hips.  I felt like telling him “that’s no good for two sweaty cyclists mate – we need to get under, get cold and get out”, but we politely said how nice it sounded and said our goodbyes.  He offered us the use of his shower if we wanted but we thanked him and declined and rattled off 55km by 11am when we reached our first destination of the day, the delightful lakeside town of Karlsborg.

the bikes have a rest while we take a dip at Karlsborg

Straight in for another swim [even better than the first in that we had a sandy bottom with this lake, rather than mud and sand] and enquired from a local girl about the ferries leaving from town.

‘No ferries ‘ she says

Found Tourist Office…..sure

Hey Toff, she's sitting here waiting for you.......

enough…. None….which means an extra 90km cycling around the lake.  Bugger.  But we reasoned that if we weren’t cycling round Lake Vattern, we’d be cycling somewhere else anyway and on a hot summer’s day, cycling round a lake should be just the ticket.  But we needed a rest and some food first so a visit to the local supermarket was followed by a lakeside picnic and another swim before setting off on the afternoon session.

the Tiveden area on the ride up to Ackersund - and I mean UP!

Highway 49 was not too crowded and started off very pleasantly…..but then the hills started.  And boy the Swedish know how to drag out a hill.  Because the gradients are so easy, it takes forever to get to the top of a hill and boy it wears you out- especially when you’ve already done 55km in the morning.  

The bonus however was we had some very scenic riding with big outcrops of colourful boulders and trees starting to change their colours.  It’s just a pity the road was not more conducive to photo stops with us often whizzing downhill with nowhere to pull over if we wanted to take a photo.  Finally found a rest area and were busy taking photos when we met a fella there who was riding his motorbike back to Stockholm and he kindly took a photo of us. 

We passed a ski area and a sign warning of moose on the loose and then came to our fourth swim of the day.  Every swim today has been fantastic with clear water – our only complaint is it has been too warm.  The water temp sits at around 21-22°c which is too hot for us.  Tap water however is a different story.  They must get all their tap water from some underground glacier because it is always fantastically cold and fresh – just what the doctor ordered.

Site of our third swim in Lake Vattern today

Now in the home straight heading for Askersund. I say that but it was a friggin long straight.

We were both tiring and as route 49 joined route 50 about 3km out of town, we nearly paid the ultimate price. Normally when you have traffic going both ways, the cars or trucks on our side slow down or move over……this time it was two trucks converging on us together…..we had nowhere to go. It was only that the oncoming truck honked to warn us that we just managed to get off the road in time…..but boy, was it close…..too close.

ACKERSUND

Shortly after this we saw a girl cycling through a wheat field from the general direction of Askersund and we asked her if we could get to town that way and she said yes.  So we gratefully got off the road and headed into town on this gravel path.  What a lovely little town.  It’s a shame we were too tired and hungry to see more of it but we took a few photos and went to the supermarket and then cycled back on the gravel path to the campsite we’d seen at the edge of town.  

Ackersund church, very impressive - you can just make out Pete on his bike in the middle photo to get an idea of its size.

Another great sunset to round out our biggest day yet

We were only charged 120 kroner ($24) with no extra money required for showers either.  So that was a pleasant surprise.  Pitched tent at the lake edge then went and got cold showers before tucking into ice cold beers and ham sandwiches for our dinner.  Delicious!  Then it was downloading photos and writing the blog while charging the camera and computer in the kitchen before finally getting to bed at 11.30pm.