Sunday 8 June

Today we drove 154 very hot miles again down the main motorway from Norway in to Sweden, to a campsite on the coast near to Uddevalla. It was situated on a very pretty peninsula down a narrow windy road with small passing places. Everything now is very dry and brown as we have had at least 5 weeks of sunshine. It was windy and dusty when we struggled to get the unit pitched up and not possible to get pegs in the ground. Our neighbours this time come from Northern Ireland, but again everyone else is either Dutch or German. We find the Dutch to be quite friendly and they speak very good English.
Next day we went to a large shopping centre, mainly to get out of the sun again! It was quite interesting to have a look around and we did buy a couple of bits. Back at camp to sit out in the sun and listen to a very talkative parrot, which was outside a caravan a couple of pitches away. We kept hearing the phone ring, fire engines go past, wolf whistles and alarm clocks!!!!



Later on it got horrendously windy and we rocked and rolled all night without a wink of sleep.
We had planned to walk the trail over the cliffs and through the woods the next day, but it was so windy it was impossible to walk out in it, so we did inside chores instead. During the afternoon there was horrendous crash - parrot’s cage had blown over and he had escaped, flying off over the trees!
We cooked and ate in the communal kitchen to get a bit of peace from the wind. Eventually the parrot’s owner came in to do his dinner as well and told us that the bird had been rescued at a neighbour’s caravan, so it was back to annoy us again! It was still very windy overnight, I ended up sleeping on the floor. By now we had every guy line we possessed pegged out with difficulty.

Wednesday 11 June

A bit calmer this morning luckily for packing up, although we did not get on very quickly. First the Irish couple came to chat and then we were visited by a lady from Cornwall! Having a folding camper in Scandinavia seems to be very unusual, so we have been entertainment value everywhere we have been. People keep stopping to have a look and ask silly questions!
150 miles today, still on motorway, so arrived around 2.00pm at this very lovely site at Tylosand - it is huge, but well laid out, flat and next to the beach. The wind had followed us here, so again it was a struggle to get pitched up (we are getting used to this now). We went for a wander round after dinner and saw quite a few collapsed windbreaks and even an awning pulled out and flung over the caravan.
Next morning we arose to a huge thunderstorm, including hailstones. (at last Big Bertha and the Tug are getting washed!)







Thursday - Sunday 15 June

We had a few nice days at Tylosand, walking along the dunes to the beach and through the woods to the village, coming back via the road with lots of huge posh houses.
We also went in to Halmstad town for a look at their old half-timbered buildings, the church, the river, sister-ship to the Cutty Sark, as well as having a mooch around the market. We were very good and left the car behind and travelled by bus!
We took a short drive to Genevad to the camping shop and stocked up on a few Swedish bits and bobs.

Monday 16 June

We started off by packing up in the rain for the first time in the whole trip (bugger was back with us again!) The drive down the motorway was quite easy, although we kept running out of the sun in to cloudbursts. Driving over the Oresund bridge in to Denmark was awesome, especially as we went from bright sunshine in Sweden to black as the night storm in Denmark.






We decided to stop for lunch just beyond Copenhagen and disaster struck! - the car just stopped as we were driving in to the parking area. One hour later we had managed to contact our breakdown service in the UK, who had faxed the Danish auto help. We then waited 2 hours for a truck, who took us back to Copenhagen to a campsite and said they would come back in the morning to take the car to a Rover service centre. We finally got pitched up about 7.00pm and were eating a salad dinner around 8.00pm…..what a day!

Tuesday 17 June

Up at 6.00am for a 7.30am pick up, only to discover at 8.30 that they were waiting for another fax from the UK. About 10.15am a truck arrived and took us to Rover who said they could look at the car in the morning….so we are now sitting twiddling our thumbs on a Copenhagen campsite waiting for the verdict. Hopefully we will be fixed in time for our ferry on Thursday, otherwise we may have to try to re-arrange that as well. We dread to think how much we have spent on telephone calls.