Summer trip 2016 – Stockholm to Bergen Day One

Another summer and another bike trip, after 3 years in a fairly flat Finland the trip this year was Sweden and Norway.

The plan was to head west towards Västerås, go up through Dalarna (the “Valley county) and over the border close to Hamar, have a rest day at my grandmothers place before biking over the mountains and the Rallarvegen road to Flåm, before heading to Bergen via the Hardangerfjord road. In the days and weeks to come I’ll make posts about the trip, starting with the first day in this post

 

Day 1: Home to somewhere north of Västerås.

The day started around 08.00 with breakfast of oatmeal porridge I think, before we went outside with the whole family for a picture and departure around 0900.

Weather during departure was awesome, we had 20 something in the morning and it went on to be close to 35 in the evening, fairly uneventfull journey from home to our first big stop in Enköping and same before Västerås.


Long stretches of country roads in fairly good condition, a nice place to eat a apple!


A small kiosk on the way to Enköping, opened by some people who got tired of working with IT in Stockholm


The roads to and over Ekolsund was random, first awesome road shoulders, then some crushed rocks where what someone said was where the old railway went.


Meeting up with mom and dad and the new RV they bought, for some food in Västerås.

After Västerås came another fairly uneventfull part of Sweden, fields and some forests on the way north towards Fagersta and our camp site just north of Ramnäs in a place called Utomhusbad Brattheden.

We found a nice public bath with a nice beach and floating dock, it even had toilets (outhouse style, no running water) and a patch of forest for us to camp in.


Sitting by the beach enjoying some pasta, sausage, halloumi and stuff!


This was our campsite for the night, nice view with the sun setting

So this was our first day, more to come later, when ever I can get my self to keep posting!

Another month, another group of warmshower guests

So it almost feels like yesterday..
That Mike, Mike, Bill and Matt was here, but it’s been weeks and now we had our second set of guests!
As with last time we opted to host for two different parties at the same time, a couchsurfer named Michael and a couple from Austria, Agnes and Chris. Michael stayed for one night, and came late, left early, but it was still nice to meet him to!
Agnes and Chris came early on Friday and was supposed to stay for three nights, but it turned in to four, not that we mind because they where both awesome guests!

Agnes baggage got delayed so on Friday we went shopping for some small items, but luggage came on Saturday.

They spent Saturday out in Stockholm, but didn’t get to see all they wanted to, so that’s why they stayed for one more day.

Sunday was a bike day and we went for some castle hopping, three castles and a royal garden!

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Agnes and Chris outside of Edsbergs Castle, we where waiting out the rain, but got to go in to the castle instead!
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Sitting in the sofa at Edsberg and having a little reading time in one of the sitting rooms, like totally Royal you know!

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The dining room and a picture from the cellar, our guess was some kind of meat/cold storage room/servants quarter, lots of metal hooks in the roof!

P1000617 We had some coffee and cake, or as it’s called in Sweden “Fika”, 5 minutes later we got a storm, rain, wind, thunder and lightning all over the place, we got stuck for a good hour before we could move on!

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Ice cream time outside of Drottningholms Castle, Chris shared lovingly with his wife Agnes!
P1000650 Another group photo, from the lawn in the connecting park at Drottningholm, and the last stop before going home again!


A map of the whole thing, in case anyone wants to check the route

When we got home we chilled and prepared some food, to go along with a movie, we also managed to take a group photo with all of us!

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Next post, probably departure day for the 2,5 week vacation trip to Finland and Joensuu

Lazy June and a little bit of July!

I cant really say that I remember to blog all that often, but I guess it’s time again!

We’ll start with June, and the weather..
Summer was late, that’s for sure, not much sun, barely touching the high 10’s (Celsius) and grey, really grey.
Fear not though, there are sunshine stories

Genesis “Gennie” Croix de Fer, touring mode!

I already posted pictures of my Genesis, now I have more pictures, this time with some more touring items on it (dressed for success you might say, at least that’s what I’m hoping for!)

Genesis_croix_touringThere she is, my Croix, that I’m more and more thinking of as a Gennie (pronounced Jenny, and yes it’s a she, it would feel awkward to ride around on something else).

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A picture showing something I was worried about, heel strikes, but well no worries there, and a fancy picture of my pricey, but awesome Klean Kanteen.

First couchsurfing, now Warmshowers, where will this end?
(Hopefully not with us knife murdered by strangers in our own home)

So, a few weeks (months I guess, technically) we had our Frenchie over, JR, and it was really nice, since then I started using reddit (not much, but still) and found out about Warmshowers.org, and promptly made one account there.

Results came quick and one, not to sunny Saturday morning our first guest came, Matthew “Matt” Dollive, who came fron England, via France and all the countries in between there and Denmark, Through Norway (from the town of Bergen) over the Mountains before crossing Sweden to stay with us for three nights.
And then on Sunday came our three Americans, Mike, Mike and Bill.

Needless to say, our 3 bedroom apartment got rather filled up (we are 6 people living there), so the boys had to sleep on mattresses in our room, the Americans got the boys room and poor Matt got to sleep in the living room.
Another thing I never thought much about before, the amount of food that is used to host this many people, I think I counted 104 eggs and 8kgs of white flour, because well breakfast is pancakes (American kind), scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, croissants, and stuff like that, but I really enjoyed it, and everyone seemed to be happy and fairly full!

Warmshower_foodThis is us, eating breakfast on Monday morning, one of the Mike’s left to see a girl, the other Mike is taking the picture, the picture doesn’t show the copious amounts of food, thanks to the appetite of Matt 😉

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Some more pictures, courtesy of Matt’s flicker page, shows more of the food then the previous ones 🙂

We also got to ride around the local area a bit, checking out Lake Mälaren at Kalhäll’s beach, and eat like a lot more (three dinners, Chicken rice curry, Lasagna and a pizza night).

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Our little gang of people biking in the Järva area and then the whole family and the Americans together before they depart, our oldest daughter loved all the attention.

Come July, come summer and sunshine!

July has been warm, so biking is made all the better, and some days you just have to stop and enjoy it, like today, going to work

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First picture just next to Ullrikesdal Castle in Solna, by some of the barn looking buildings, second is in Norra Djurgården, by a little lake (/ large pond), it was already more then +20 in the morning, sweet.

wpid-20140708_065312.jpg JJ Abrams style lens flare selfie #nofilters #nomakeup (#lolhashtag)

So that’s that then, I got three more weeks of work, before I had to Joensuu for three days, followed by a bike home!

Enjoy the summer, catch you later!