Day 16 – today we're really going back to the Swedish mainland!

So I packed up our mats and sleeping bags – we've been sleeping in the hut on the airfield at Kumlinge, haven't seen a soul yet, they leave it open. The day looked bright and all was well. The Julian checked the weather & I went out and looked up. Oh. So then Julian started looking into going East to Finland instead, hmmm. We're basically in the middle of a high (came through last night with rain) and a low, here now, which means that the weather is less ideal across Scandinavia. So we had a think about what to do and I got ready to go swim at a nearby beach I'd scouted out from the air as we came in to land yesterday. And the thunder started, so I got Julian to come with me before the weather got too bad. Hmmm the rock entry to the water (no reeds the other nearby entries to the water are obscured by reeds) takes us past 2 houses, both of which appear not to be habited. Luckily in Scandinavia you have a right of way across all land, even private. So we were 5m from the water when there was a massive lighning bolt accompanied by really loud thunder which made me cover my ears. I was behind Julian who saw the lightning strike the reeds on the other side on the lake area we were trying to swim in..... So since the rain was pretty heavy by this time we decided to take our wilderness wash (non-toxic to the environment) and have a rain shower. Julian washed and rinsed out his hair before I decided that I would manage this feat too, which I did. Luckily the rain here is warm unlike the cold Melbourne rain and it really was just like taking a shower, apart from the splashback of tree bits up our legs.

Back at the hut I got bitten behind the knee by a horsefly, which over the course of a couple of hours blew up to 20cm diameter and 1cm deep and really quite sore, why do all the bites etc. happen to me and none to Julian? This is definitely an ad against expensive hair removal, maybe hairy legs would have saved me????

Day 15 - tick blues and flight training

Well we kept the tick in a zip lock bag (thanks Nick for all those small zip-locks!) and took it first thing to the Apotek, which I had luckily seen in my travels the previous day & my German allowed me to recognise as a chemist. It was a pretty amazing place from the 1860s with all the brown glass ground neck bottles, wooden drawers of various herbs and chemicals and a lovely wooden cash register (no longer in use). The chemist explained that we'd got all of the tick out (phew), I was worried about breaking off its head, which apparently isn't that bad either, and that my tick was a 3 year old female, cool. She also told us what to look out for if it had given me either of the diseases and reassured me that the bacteria needs the tick to have lodged itself in you for a few days, phew, just have to watch out for flu-like symptoms and go to a hospital if they occur.....

Old style chemist

and from the outside

So after that reassurance we decided to check the weather and continue on back to Sweden. Well it was looking wild and woolly in Sweden so we thought we'd go to nearby Mariehamn on a larger island of the Aaland archipelago. We'd been told that Mariehamn was a party (and ferry) boat destination with duty free alcohol so we were expecting something a bit wilder than quiet Kumlinge, but to be honest with you it wasn't. It had a lot of downmarket looking bars, clothes shops and a large supermarket, a few sand beaches (d'oh no bathers again and the Scandinavians again failed to live up to their nudist reputation), we spent about 3h there and then moved on.

a church in Mariehamn

Total landing bill €25, fuel €2.44/L (quite expensive), place: cycle paths 9/10; town 2/10; beaches 6/10

Kumlinge 1: Mariehamn 0

The weather started looking a bit iffy around 5pm so after picking up some smoked salmon from the smokery on the fishing harbour we happened to come across (€18.90 / kg), we hurried back to the airfield and my flying lesson continued back to Kumlinge.

It's funny but I've been telling everyone else, but never told Julian it appears, that I had the intention to learn how to fly in our plane, so since he realised he's been telling me the theory and getting me to practise turning etc. I'm already pretty good at straight and level, as sometimes there is stuff on the ground that needs photographing out his window / maps that need folding / he needs a rest. Before this starts to scare you, the pilot in command (P1) is allowed to let anyone fly a plane under their supervision, which in practice means that the co-pilot (P2) of your Boeing / Airbus is often doing the landing of your plane, with their 250 hours of experience (50 of which on a flight simulator) – have you ever wondered why your Ryanair / Easyjet flight lands which such a bang on the runway???

Anyway I'm no where near taking off or landing yet :-)

Day 14 – Skaa to Kumlinge - tick magnet

We flew over Stockholm itself and then across the sea to the start of Finland the Aland archipelago.  We landed on Kumlinge, an airstrip ending on the sea & beautifully quiet. A lovely undisturbed ecosystem with a whole variety of different plants & wildlife (inc ticks, mozzies & horseflies). The runway is lined with bluebells, cornflowers & reeds. I picked up a bluebell to have a closer look at the flower & discovered there was a fat bumblebee head down in the flower and let it fall again in a hurry! 

We lunched on a quiet rock by the water: smoked reindeer bought in NK department store, which tasted almost resiny from the pine smoke – very thin slices with loads of flavour. Also the divine French washed rind goats cheese found at the covered market in Stockholm and a very ripe Swedish blue, described as being 'like Rocquefort'. Not to forget the smoked eel (very rich) and beautiful smoked salmon, with a lovely crispy skin. 

We bumbled around all day on the bikes, coming to the conclusion that 399 inhabitants (or 370 depending on which part of the local authorities' website you find most up to date) means that you really see no one around. We went to the ferry port and there were several tourists' cars (mainly Finland & Estonia), and tourists on hire bikes but really not much else. It's funny the island is Finnish, but 95% of the population speak Swedish, and all the guest house ads stapled to the barn at the ferry port were written in Swedish. 

waiting for the ferry

We continued on our way trying to explore all the main (& many of the minor roads) & finally came upon the Remmarhamn (guest marina): the significance of this place is that in looking on Kumlinge's website I discovered that they hold a market every Tuesday evening (18.30) at the Remmarhamn, which is not marked on any map, so was causing me a large amount of (understandable) worry. We took the bridge over to a neighbouring island but decided to turn back and have a closer look at the marina, getting there at about 6pm. At which point there were 3 trestle tables and not much else. Hmmmm. So we chatted to some Finns who were sailing the archipelago and drinking in the marina's pub and by the time we turned around again the entire island's population were queueing up at the trestles. So we hurried back, as one of the few items already laid out was one of the traditional carved wood Swedish bread knives, which I'd been looking for, and I had a gut feeling that someone else would buy them. But I was lucky. Julian scored an amazing gooseberry tart, really a very simple thing, just some fresh gooseberries baked on what was essentially a shortbread base (shortcrust pastry with extra sugar), but lovely. I got a local fish of some variety, that was selling remarkably quickly at 12€ a fish, as well as a huge block of lovely cured salmon (5.50€) - dill on top, a bit of sugar in the cure at a guess, along with some great citrus notes – I guess grated lemon & orange rind. So we changed our dinner plans and had the smoked fish with steamed veggies for dinner.

the market going off

Julian with gooseberry pie

After which I discovered I had a tick on my back, and did the usual 'just get it off me!'  So despite my better knowledge I had Julian burn it with a cigarette lighter, then once dead I got him to do what would have been the right thing in the first place & twist it out with my tweezers. The sight of the little legs scrabbling as it munched into me was too much to bear. So for all you Europeans reading this blog: I have never been bitten by anything nastier than a mosquito in Australia, but in Sweden I have been bitten by a tick potentiallly carrying a nasty bacteria or TBE virus and in London I have been bitten on the face overnight by what I think was a spider as my cheek was numb for over a month. Which just goes to show that if you want to sleep safe and sound in your bed at night, avoid Europe and come to Oz.

Day 13 - Swedish bug horror stories

Today we rode into Stockholm, did a bit of a loop around town, went to the covered market in Ostermalm for some awesome cheese and smoked fish that we ate beside what we thought was a canal but turned out to have been the waterway separating 2 islands, so we found ourselves yet again cycling the same coast line.  We had a few difficulties as the cycle path ended up taking us through a museum's grounds and sort of disappearing, but otherwise it was a good ride.  At Mats & Tina's we had really good hamburgers and heard all about all the nasty diseases Swedish insects can carry and about the one poisonous snake they have over here, which all sounds a bit worrying!  Otherwise a great fun evening.

Day 12 - rain rain go away

Sweden is being hit by a series of lows, and with the inclement weather, we decided to take a day off and chat to Jarl & Esther.  Esther is a big black dog in search of a home in the Stockholm region, Jarl is great to chat to & one of the reasons we stayed in Stockholm so long.  In the afternoon we met Mats & Tina, and will be going to visit them for a bbq tomorrow.

Hmm, haven't kept up to date with the blog as I would like: I seem to have missed a day.....

Day 10 - cycling and canoeing around Stockholm Drottningholm (Kings palace)

It took us a while to get going and prepared in the morning. The low pressure system was causing gray skies and forbidding weather. So we cycled part of the way to Stockholm to hire a canoe. It was really nice on the water and it is surprising how slowly you (I) go in an old fibreglass hire canoe. We decided to turn back after 30mins and only make it an hour's rental, but we were lucky in that we got to see the bridge open from the water to let all the boats through.

massive bridge opens

Then we went to Drottningholm, only to discover that it closes at 4.30pm..... Which would have given us less than an hour in the castle, so we contented ourselves with a look from the outside and a stroll through the formal gardens. We are constantly surprised by the closing hours here in Sweden (same problem in the Nordiska museet), which just goes to show that we probably shouldn't have stopped off to look at some really very lovely furniture at Ekeroe Mobil, a large wooden framed barn. I found my perfect armchair: a lovely comfortable moulded fibreglass form with leather on the outside and fabric covering the seat and back. Fabulous. Yours for only 40 000 SEK (approx £4000 or AUD $8000), yours, not mine!

That night there was a massive downpour, which was so loud that I actually couldn't sleep for the drumming on the roof! If only we'd put the cover on the plane.

Day 9 - Skaa Edeby

Day off! Time to catch up with those blogs.

Day 8: Stockholm

Today was the day to try a real bike ride. So we went to the local store to get some cash out to buy bus tickets. Long story short, we ended up riding all over the island and then when we got to the bus stop we discovered it was card payment..... And then the bus arrived before we'd managed to work out the system. Luckily the bus driver said just hop on, put the bikes in the back. We were ???? so he came around the back and showed us the special bike rails on the back of the massive bendy bus and watched us tie it on securely. As an aside, one thing that really amazed me was that everyone in Sweden and Denmark, bus and truck drivers included speaks excellent English. In fact the older generation (I'm talking 70-80 year olds) speaks better English than the 20 years olds.

Anyway we caught the bus to Brommaplan then decided to ride in from there. Brommaplan is where Stockholm's main airfield is located and is the equivalent of being outside the M25 or peripherique. So we started our ride in an industrial area and I thought to myself, what a stupid idea to ride this far into town.  We crossed several bridges with great vantage points on the city and were in the centre in 8kms.  Well with a little stop off at a beach to eat lunch and bemoan our lack of forethought in not bringing our bathers!  A lot of Sweden (so far) seems relatively new, even for us Aussies, but really very nice.  The lovely city hall was built in 1915. Apparently the church with cast iron steeple I was admiring is actually one of the oldest, but I think the steeple is new.  

City hall

The weather has been unusually warm (read heat wave) so we took it pretty easy and had a few naps under trees, ending up at the Nordisk Museet at 4pm.  We didn't realise that it closes at 5pm until 4.45.....  It was a fascinating ethnography museum with costumes, furniture and even re-built rooms from houses.  It was surprising to see how much the Swedish standard of life has increased post-WWII.

The ride back to Skaa was fine, lots of gear changing as we went up and down hills and under roads and beside tunnels wherever the bike path took us.

Random beached ship we saw in a canal on the way back to the airfield

Total kms 50

Day 7: Bornholm - Stockholm (Skaa Edeby)

So we sadly said goodbye to Bornholm today, and set off on the 3h journey up to Skaa Edeby (Stockholm).  I have to admit that I had a bit of a nap in the middle so excuse the lack of photos and detailed way description.  I was amazed by how much sparser the population in Sweden is & how many more forests we flew over.

Skaa Edeby airstrip

When we arrived we met a lot of people and were shown the best place to put up our tent: under the wing of an Antonov - an old Siberian air transport machine that apparently took 10 people, 10 goats, and several hundred kilo of potatoes.  It's a really massive plane and currently out of service with no intention of putting it back in, due to the amount of fuel it uses (radial 9 cylinder engine).  Its name is Boz so they're planning to make it into a pub, which sounds like an excellent idea to me!  At the time of writing (several days later) I've been using it in the traditional Siberian manner: using it to hang my washing out to dry.....

real camping under the wing

Not much to report as we just socialised.  Julian made tuna mornay on rice for dinner, which turned out surprisingly well, considering that we had no milk and the carton we borrowed from the fridge was actually mjolke, a kind of yoghurt....

Mjolke

The sunset was really lovely that night, but as always the camera was inferior to the human eye...

Day 6: Bornholm

I was determined to make it to Svaneke. And we did, but got the bus back.... Most of the ride was through a big pine forest in the centre of the island, which is really lovely, especially in the really remarkably sunny weather we've been having. Svaneke itself was pretty, but pretty full of tourists, so we kept going pretty quickly. 

Forest cycle way

When the bus brought us back to the main town, Ronne, we went for a walking tour in one of my brochures – lots of lovely half timbered houses with massive rosebushes and maybe tree peonies growing out of little holes in the cobblestones. The brochure struggled a bit to find much more than a 1915 church and lots of pretty cobblestoned streets lined with half-timbered houses, but they did their best. 

One of the many pretty streets in Ronne with half timbered houses and large flowers

I got a big chunk of wacky Danish cheese, which I'm not too thrilled about, but Julian seems to like it. I also had some with carraway, but what Julian didn't eat last night, the hedgehog took care of in several long bouts of noisy licking.... I was curious at the time as to what piece of plastic it had bitten into at one point: turned out to be Julian's peanut packet...

Mmmm wacky Danish cheese in the eating area of the camp ground