Taz needs to learn that certain bodily functions are not acceptable when sharing small living spaces

Tuesday 6th July - Alingsas

Caught up with Caroline in Goteborg today just long enough to get the gin, Branston and magazines. In the train on the way in we had debated whether we could read a magazine quickly enough on the way back to use it to dip in the pickle (washed down with gin of course) or if we should buy some cheese to dip in it - much more sophisticated. In the end we had to run to catch the train (not easy with bags of booze and gossip) and it took most of the journey for us to recover enough to think about food. Maybe the fish and chips we had for lunch came into it too.

Lovely to see Caroline but she did let the side down by commenting on how much weight David has lost and just telling me I looked well. Need to indoctrinate her into the ways of the sisterhood. But it was really lovely to see her. We're just waiting now to see if she will get any free time tomorrow to meet up for a bit longer.

Bodily functions? Taz is still adapting to the Swedish diet and apart from having to use an average of 7 poo bags a day we are occasionally woken during the night by poisonous smells drifting from his "bedroom".

Bit of a slip up with the photo. The sun was so strong (at 7pm) that I couldnt see to position the laptop camera to include the sauna in the lake behind. It can be so challenging some days.

Taz can't see the point in cous-cous

Varberg Friday 2nd July

Double dose of good news

Thursday - New great nephew - Oliver Jack, congrats to Paula and Neil

Friday - Our neighbours getting married, congrats to Shannon and Alistair

Bad moment for David tonight. He bought 2 new corkscrews cos he didn't like the Ikea one we brought but when he finally decided which one to use he discovered that all the bottles of red wine we've got have screwcaps! Took the obvious course of action and began to work his way through the corkless bottles. I'm being a good wife and helping him with this.

Engine fixed, Swedish/English dictionary bought finally so we know what we're eating and had a good free stop last night in pretty town on Lake Vattern and blew the money we saved on a meal out (and the rest). All is good.

Looking forward very much to seeing Caroline Tues/Weds when she's physio-ing for the GB under 21 handball team at a tournament in Goteborg. Also looking forward to getting the Branston Pickle, 1 Litre bottle of Gin and trashy magazines she's bringing out for us!

Taz marks out his pitch

Nora - Tuesday 28th June

Bit of a blip. We’re having to hang around city of Orebro waiting for a part for the van. Not a problem tho as we’ve happened on a nice little campsite on edge of a pretty wooden town called Nora on Lake Norasjon – which we cycled round today and ..snigger ye not, we didn’t get lost. We learnt a useful fact at tourist info when she told us it was 3 miles round the lake. I double checked cos it looked a lot longer than 3 miles and apparently a Swedish mile is nearly 10km – go figure. Lovely wild flowers - shame we never got round to that photography course

We’re only on our second evening but on our campsite walk tonight David was able to fill me in on the occupants of every caravan/campervan/tent. He has been known to go to the toilet block 3 times in one hour as an excuse to check on whats going on. But he and Taz have developed a good double act to stop anyone settling next to us. The last time someone came to look at the pitch next to ours the 2 of them walked out, David to say hello and Taz to walk up to them and wee on their prospective pitch.

Taz hearts Swedish dog food

Midsummer Day, June 26th Hallstahammar

Is it wrong to covet plastic goods? We are on the way to being a target for earth savers with the amount of plastic we are collecting. It seems to be the in-thing to have a special plastic container for everything caravan/campervan over here. I have tracked down my special folding plastic crate for carrying the washing up to the trough, my plastic basket for the laundry, we have plastic shoes for the showers and I'm trying to find where they all buy their plastic baskets to take to the washrooms ( I currently use a plastic Waitrose bag). It has reached the point that when we were in a camping shop David and I chorused "thats a nice plastic bucket" when we spotted a pile of them.

Its probably all a reaction to natural things, after getting lost yet again (sigh) last night in a nature reserve I'm beginning to shake whenever I see a sign for anything to do with nature.

really good day yesterday - Midsummer eve. Its a really big thing here in Scandinavia so we asked at reception and were signposted to an event 10k away. Off we toddled on our bikes and found it was being held at an open air agricultural museum. Really lovely, all kids and many adults had flower wreathes and there was dancing and singing round a kind of maypole. We joined in, of course, even tho we might have been praying to the antichrist of plastic containers for all we knew. The museum bit was good too and they had 2 special exhibitions on: 199 ways to trap a mouse and miniature Swedish outhouses! Overload of culture. So apart from managing to get lost on our evening walk - I am sooo over getting lost, again it was a lovely day.

Now planning our next move around somewhere with either a sports bar or signal for Turkish Tv so we can watch footie and easy access to Fiat dealer as we have a warning light on engine. David is torn between finding somewhere that Germans are staying in in the event we win or an empty field with good sat TV in case we lose!

Taz thinks nature is over-rated.

Tuesday June 22nd - Karlstad

Feeling lucky to be alive!!!!! On Sunday we couldn't find a free spot so went to what sounded like a lovely campsite in a national park between two lakes. It was a real back to nature place with a vengeance. Took us 3 attempts to find a place to park where we weren't under siege from midges and mossies (glad I had brought my mosquito head net) then we shut the door and whilst all the other proper campers boiled their billycans and recycled their contents in the earth closets before crawling under their 1 sq metre of canvas, we cooked up some lamb (yes baby sheep), turned up the telly and downed our gin and tonics (for the quinine of course)

But boy did we pay for it the next day. We checked out and decided just to do the 5k nature walk before we drove off. Left Taz in the van (thank God) and tottered off with the little leaflet we were given. Same old same old, we were lost after 5 mins but there was an orange line on the map which met up with the nature walk so we just followed the orange markers. Four hours later we gave up and called the campsite for help. Help was effectively turn around and walk back. The orange lines never did meet up!

Just a nice days walk you're thinking. Think again - it was 7 hours in total, no food, no drink, didnt see another soul just lots of forest, swamps and mosquitoes. Absolute hell. We couldnt stop for more than 15 secs because after 5 the mossies homed in. In fact it was a full body work out as we were waving our arms around fighting them off all the time except when we needed to use our hands to haul ourselves across swamps or clamber up or down rock faces. The leaflet was stuck together with blood in 30 mins from swatting the blood suckers. Forgot to say - the centre had signs up warning that bears, cougars and wolves had been spotted recently.

I'm taking 90% of the blame as I didn't think it was a problem that the orange lines dropped off the little leaflet map and I just assumed they joined up at some point in a neat loop - wrong. but it didn't help that when I was crawling along a log over a swamp heaving with mossies David told me that we were now following the black markers and when I looked up I realised he meant the black lines round the trees where the orange had been burnt off. In other words the rangers had diverted the walk because it was impassable in their opinion.

But we survived and we've spent most of today sitting around our new campsite doing nothing much more than tending our bites and looking for dressings big enough to cover the ginormous blister on my heel.

Phew, too much movement must stop now.

Taz tests the water

Saturday 19th June Lake Vanern

Shouldn’t have disrespected the Turkish commentary for the footie. It was the only part of the game we enjoyed. Once we realised that Carragoosh was Jamie Carragher we knew that a cornoosh was a corner, Mamoosh was the Algerian player Mamour etc. And just as we were about to turn off in disgust Sean Wright Flips came on so we stuck with it.

Parked up in a lovely spot next to a lake just above Lake Vanern. There is a 5km walk starting just in front of the van so we set off at 8.45pm thinking we’d just go a little way and over an hour later arrived back with Taz still on his feet. Unlike the walks we go on in the UK it was all beautifully marked out with bits of info in Swedish and English along the route. Past a sauna at edge of lake and an abandoned outdoor theatre in the middle of a fairytale woodland glade. Taz had a paddle at the spot named as the Pensioners’ bathing place. Very appropriate.

Taz dips his toes in Lake Vanern - briefly

Thursday 17th June

Lake Vanern

From the ridiculous to the sublime. Spotted the road sign next to a lake in the middle of nowhere. But we didnt worry about it for too long as we don't have the car with us and our bikes are washed in the rain.

The sublime - found our own little beach to park up next to for a night. David got a bit carried away after dinner on the sand and stumbled off muttering about fire, long grass, and sunset. Came back 30 mins later with empty box of matches. Just as well - the sun takes an awful long time to go down in this part of the world!

Settling down for footie now. Too wet and windy for town tonight and there is little hope of much atmosphere in the TV room on camp (part of the kitchen) as the Germans will be licking their wounds and the Norwegians and Swedish are disinterested. Never mind we've started on the wine and pringles, beer and crisps to come! Hey ho - which reminds me: if its "hie" in Denmark, "Hei Hei" in Sweden, will it be "ha ha ha" in Norway - sorry

Just watching BBC 24 hur news to get the lineup and as much info as possible as we can only find the match on Turkish TV on our telly and we understand even less Turkish than Swedish. But we can make our own commentary cant we?