Day 1 quote – “pfft, who needs a spare tyre”​

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Sundsvall – Stockholm

 

As there was now only myself & Meg, we were up & out of the camp site pretty sharpish. 2 nights in a row in a tent. That is a world record for me. And one I am happy not to ever break.

The whole camping/camp site culture really does confuse me. People, who seem to have perfectly decent cars, and one would therefore assume money to spend on proper holidays and hotels, yet they spend their free time sleeping in a plastic hut on wheels. Some of the caravans were permanently moored (I don’t know what you do with caravans, so I’m going with moored) and plastic tents zipped to them, and some even have wooden decking outside them. And inside, they have massive TVs and proper home comforts. But then they shower in a wooden hut with about 200 other people. This is one culture I will never quite understand. And then people who cycle around and pitch a tent and feel that is a holiday. Don’t even start me on these people…

Anyway, we set off with only 350km to do today, so were doing our usual, ‘we should be in by early afternoon’ chat. That is always the tell-tell sign that things are going to go wrong. So, after about an hour, Milo started to wobble a little, and a minute later a tyre gave out. When we stopped, it had a big old gash in it, but I was adamant I was going to use the tyre filler stuff I had bought. I squeezed a can of that in, and it had zero affect. Then, upon closer inspection, we actually had half of the tyre missing. It was properly destroyed. I got onto our Euro breakdown people, and we sat patiently at the side of the road, put up the chairs, got our books out, and looked like a proper couple of old people watching the world go by (until Meg’s patience ran out, and decided to go for a jog. And I thought I was the slightly random person on this trip?). After another phone call an hour later, it became apparent they had forgotten about us. The excuse I got was “they didn’t get their fax” – a fax? Who sends a fax in 2012? But, finally a massive Swedish giant arrived, took us to a tyre place nearby and we got upsold into replacing both front tyres. It was clear the other tyre was also going to explode at some stage very soon as well.

The drive to Stockholm was pretty uneventful after that. And we got in in the early evening to stay with Johanna (Meg’s friend from Shanghai) and Anton. After the last couple of days of camping we were basically just glad to have a shower, a bed and some home cooked food.