Dear and gentle reader, due to circumstances explained in detail in this report, no daily report appeared yesterday. The editor wants to apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Day 42 “It will be an easy ride” Quote of our hosts in Mölndal
Yesterday evening, Tomas our host of the Welcome To My Garden site asked if we would like to join them for breakfast.
What an honor! Of course, we said yes (as we kept all our no-nos and maybes at home). Elin and Tomas had prepared a wonderful table full of healthy and even beautiful dishes.
It was also a moment to share stories and experiences. And as time does at such cozy moments, it flies.
We also looked at our route ahead together with Tomas and Elin, and they proposed a slightly different route, which would be a lot nicer and easier to do. I also got the suggestion to camp at a lake that was close to our endpoint.
We started our trip through Göteborg, and even though it’s a cool, big city with lots of new art and buildings, all the construction there added at least an hour to our drive to get out.
Once we left the city, the scenery turned into beautiful, rolling hills and fields.
Around noon, we got to Bohus Fästning in Kungälv, a fortress with a long and interesting history that I recommend you read about on Wikipedia.
Lunch was simple, the weather was great, and the fortress seemed to smile at us, like it knew what was coming.
Still 50+ kilometers to go and 550 climbing meters with a slight headwind.
The road was nice, the scenery was beautiful, but we were pretty tired when we got to Lilla Edet.
As a gentle reader of this blog, you may naturally inquire about the rationale behind my frequent photographic documentation of roadways. These images are also uploaded to Komoot, our designated route planning app, to provide fellow bikers and bikers with a visual representation of the road conditions at specific points of the road.
Once we arrived in Lilla Edet, it was 5 o’clock. At that time, we needed to buy some food and water as we would be doing our first “wild camping” near a lake that was recommended by Tomas’s sister.
But we were getting hangry and wild camping was stressing us out, so we decided to make things easier and just grab a pizza in the village. It’d be our first pizza of the trip anyway.
So then off to the ICA supermarket, it’s open from 7 AM to 11 PM, 7 days a week! We at least needed water for washing some breakfast, and we can buy the rest tomorrow along the way.
Dinner, locking bikes, shopping, and unlocking bikes took a while, so we finally headed to our sleeping spot at 18:45. Still had 15 kilometers to go with lots of extra luggage and 160 meters of climbing.
So much uncertainty in both our minds: will we ever find the perfect spot?
Getting to the lakes was a real struggle. Leen was super tired and I was just really tired. We had to stop a lot, but once we got to the top, we could start looking for a good spot in the forest or by the lake.
Finally we found a spot, but sadly enough it was too small for our tent.
So we went back, since we’d checked out a few spots on the way, but they were either private, too wet, or too uneven to sleep on (and I mean really uneven, not just a little pea under the mattress).
So in her despair, Leen was at her wit’s end, we called at a house to ask if we could set up a tent on their lawn. The first person we talked to didn’t speak English and referred us to one of his neighbors. The second was also pretty reluctant. He said he had a problem with his water (who doesn’t from time to time), but after we assured him that we had all the stuff we needed (we were carrying 4.5 liters on our bikes), he finally allowed us to stay in his garden. 🙏
With our last sparks of energy, we pitched our tent, refreshed ourselves a bit, and went to bed.
In the end, we did 85 kilometers with 700 climbing meters, some with very steep angles.
Day 43 When you stretch a bit too far
I woke up around 7, but I wasn’t feeling like my usual energetic self. We were sleeping on a slight slope, and even though I put something under my sleeping mat to keep from rolling off, I was pretty alert all night.
Leen was up early too, so we started packing, freshened up a bit, and found a spot in the forest to use as a toilet. We didn’t see anyone moving around in the house where we slept in the garden the whole time we were busy.
A quick breakfast: a banana each, the dessert we had planned for the day before (a chocolate/cocoa soya dessert for Jan and drink yogurt for Leen), and two iced coffees. Not a very complete breakfast, but we did not feel at ease enough to go for the full breakfast.
We got ready way faster than our other camping trips, and by 9:15, we were all set to start biking.
We left a thank you note on the doorstep of our gentle and slightly reluctant savior.
My muscles were a bit sore when we left, but as we started downhill and I gave some encouraging taps on the butt, we were off for another 82 kilometers. Komoot promised us 380 climbing meters, so we figured we were good for today.
We met some young folks doing a 100,000 steps challenge in 24 hours. Since we’re all a bit crazy and love challenges, we chatted about our experiences. One of them was even from Korbeek-Lo! The rest were Swedes.
Leen’s legs were way better today, so I felt like I was dragging behind all day. And just like Garmin promised, my mood wasn’t the best because of the bad sleep, so I had to stay on guard the whole time.
We also had to do a little replanning to hit up a shop in Trollhättan, so we didn’t make as much progress as I’d hoped. By 11:30, we’d only covered 16 of the 82 kilometers we planned.
The shop in Trollhättan was at a big Maxi ICA, where we bought some food to complement our breakfast, which was from now on called brunch. We also bought some ham for our lunch later that day.
We decided to drive a few more kilometers and stopped at Vänersborg’s lovely market square.
Having lunch near the church was indeed a fine moment of the day.
We still have 50 kilometers remaining, but due to a miscommunication regarding the necessity of a detour through Mellerud for provisioning, a revised route was required.
But the replan wasn’t so good. A big part of the road, the shortest route according to Komoot, was via the E45. This is an expressway where you can ride at 100 km/h. After having played with our lives for too long (I must say that the Swedes are a lot more careful than the Danes), we started to look for alternatives.
Long story short, we finally got to Mellerud at 17:00. We did some shopping for two days since we’re staying at our next stop for 4 days to chill out. Don’t underestimate how long that takes: finding the entrance (seriously), locking the bike, picking out and finding food, waiting in line, unlocking our bikes. Once the food was all packed on our bikes, we were good to go. And it was 18:15.
Still some 15 kilometers till our final destination.
My brain was screaming “overload, overload” but we kept going. We took regular breaks to catch our breath, but we made it to the lovely Airbnb in Åsensbruk, which was luckily located on a steep hill.
Unload, carry the bags to the house, eat, shower, lights off.
We ended up doing 88.8 kilometers with 500 meters of climbing, even with all the detours.
That brought our total race to Lake Vänern to 173.8 kilometers.
But now we’ll take it easy. 5 nights at this typical Swedish house and 4 days of rest, although I hear Leen making plans to visit this and go look at that.
Did I ever say that I love her?
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