Day 3-2. Vilshäred to Kärradal
Damae was feeling sociable and texted the token Swede in our group of friends. Magnus, having just arrived back at his parent's place was still feeling a little restless. After exchanging a few texts, the conversation turned into a phone call. Magnus decided it would be fun to travel up to visit us and we agreed to meet up in Falkenburg, according to our route guide well worth the visit. So lunch was sorted for today, and Magnus was to get a nice hour and a half drive to ease his wanderlust. A win-win situation for the day. Excellent!
This being a cycling holiday following a coastal route we not surprisingly cycled on up the coast. To our delight we discovered that we were now following a signed route called the 'Ginstleden' and, just as the motorcyclist on the ferry had said the scenery had turned from lovely to gorgeous. Just after we had stopped we passed through Ugglarp, missing the Car and Plane museum completely in the process. We figured it was either very small, or the Swedes were hiding this gem for themselves. After Ugglarp the route climbed again going inland and we encountered, for the first time on this trip a tailwind. This was a little hillier less well cultivated land, skirting woodlands and reminded us just a little of southern sections of the Norwegian NSCR. At Boberg the road crossed the river with a dam and what looked like a salmon leap or a weir of some sort.
Cycling with a tailwind on a hot day has its downsides, so when we turned into the wind heading south west back to the coast it was actually a relief to feel the cooling effect of the wind again. At Grimsholmen we turned back northish and the view was very lovely. So much so that after a short steep climb there was a viewing point with picnic tables. Pausing only briefly to take a photo (which entirely failed to show the beauty of the spot and was deleted later that evening) we pushed on towards Falkenburg. This was a bit of a shame as it looked like a lovely spot for lunch. We'd timed it well and arrived around a quarter of an hour early. After just crossing the bridge into town we paused to get our bearings and find a good place to meet up.
Damae noticed the a sign pointing to Gamla stan (Old Town) and thought it would be fun to photograph her Gamla Stan under his eponymous sign. That silliness over we followed the sign to Gamla stan and managed to miss it completely, or so we thought. After a few minutes we ended up by the train station in front of an impressive church, so Damae texted Magnus to say we would be there. While we were waiting it rained a little which surprised us given how sunny it had been. But soon the shower cleared, a mild boredom bout hit and just as Magnus arrived, the baking sun returned.
"Falkenburg gets a good review in the guide that we are using and in truth it was OK place. We had a long lazy lunch at a pizzeria with a view over the 18c bridge. The river was fast flowing and Magnus reckoned that the recent rainy weather might have had something to do with it."
The pizza restaurant was round the corner from a square where a sound stage was being set up. The sound checking was thus not too intrusive. Here Magnus let us into another Swedish secret, the 'lunch special'. The pizza's we bought fell under the 'lunch special' rule; a main course, a dessert and a coffee or a glass of pop for something of the order of SEK50 to SEK80 (five to eight Euros). For that sort of money we always had a substantial meal and were to make good use of this great aspect of Swedish culinary culture in our week in Sweden. Even better most places had a veggie option so we didn't have to look far for something yummy.