Euro Day 32 - O-Ringen

Thursday, 25 July 2019

As I suspected, yesterday was a big day.  In fact so big that we didn't arrive at the event centre until 7:45, and we weren't eating dinner until 10. 

First up Jon and I went for a run  - it was a beautiful morning and Stockholm was shining in the morning light.

coming down the stairs and into the street from our hotel 

After breakfast back at our room (in a cup and with one spoon between us as we sent our bowls & cutlery home) , we packed up and headed out to Jon's long time friend Fredrik's place. This took two bus rides with all our luggage but we made it fine.  Fredrik and his family live in a gorgeous suburb quite close (15 mins from the centre).   And a 1 minute walk from a lake of course!

We spent a lovely morning swimming & chatting in the sun.

The apartments in their area also have a shared sauna, so when the lake is cold (it wasn't today), you can warm up in there. While we were there other local residents came and swum and went. Fredrik & Josephine's house is also right by a shady park, so lots of the other locals were sunning themselves there - it really was a great location and reminded me why Stockholm is a great city! 

After a delicious lunch Fredrik very kindly drove us out to the campervan pickup place. Even though I made sure I booked a pickup from Stockholm, it turned out the place which called itself 'Stockholm' is in fact a long way away - to get there on public transport it would have taken us a train and two bus rides, followed by a 20 minute walk.   Even driving straight there still took 45 minutes.  Sheesh! We're so grateful to Fredrik for helping us out !   It was way out of town through an industrial looking town, then actually another 8k out of that town, into the middle of nowhere, literally at the end of the road.  As we approached the address it was looking really dodgy..

..so we were all super relieved to look right and see campervans lined up ready to go..

As always it takes ages to pickup a campervan, you have to watch a 30 minute instructional video then get shown around it by the agent, so after a sneak peak we said goodbye to Fredrik who needed to head back to town to pack for the rest of the family summer holiday including a visit to Astrid Lindgren world, a couple of hours drive away.

Finally released from the campervan centre we drove straight to a supermarket and did a biggish (in volume and of course price!) shop. Then we finally hit the road for our 2 hour drive south to Norrkoping (I can't find the Swedish o's on this keyboard but it has a few) 

The drive was beautiful - we went past so many lovely looking lakes with boats and summer houses - exactly the Sweden I remembered from the 90s.   A few kms out of town we drove past billboards for O-Ringen then we tuned into O-Ringen radio.   We found our site easily and after a quick wander around the massive arena area we made dinner and ate it outside.  This campervan is really good - it is going to be hot again, but it's equipped with flyscreens on all the windows so we can keep it cool at night (thank goodness!). 

We're all looking forward to putting our orienteering shoes back on tomorrow and heading out into the lovely looking Swedish forests!