Day 6-2. Göteborg to Hällevikstrand.
To add to our misery the much of the first thirty of so kilometers this morning was along busy main roads, with poorly surfaced cycle tracks passing industrial estates and retail parks. Instead of more of the loveliness of the Ginstleden, we seemed to have been suddenly transported to the less appealing areas of Trafford Park by aliens who had nothing better to do. Today was not going to quite work out as we had hoped, and this was just the morning.
Enough of the reality check; our advice if you are doing this section is from Göteborg follow the normal cycle signs to Karra, the first of these being a sharp right turn shortly after the bridge over the Gota. On approaching Karra (before entering it) follow signs to Kungälv. Eventually you will start seeing signs that make sense and are legible. The other alternative is to prepare properly by visiting cycletourer.co.uk and taking a look at the maps that Jon recommends for touring in Sweden. I tried too late and rather half-heartedly to find them in Utrecht and now we were paying the price for that and a general lack of detail planning. Though you'd have thought that a signed route should be signed.
In Karra we did not know we should be following signs to Kungälv and thus had a nice Jongkind diversion of the town. We appeared to pass through the grounds of a school, before we asked some locals and they sent us back the way we came. Due to the aforementioned navigation problems it took us around three hours to cover the first forty kilometres.
Still we were finally on the way and getting over the earlier disappointments of the day. The scenery improved quickly as we arrived at the fort of Kungälv although just before the bridge the cycle track we were on next to the road just disappeared. Still once across the bridge we paused to consider whether or not we wanted to look at the fort just as it started to rain. Ho hum.
The fort located at the fork of two rivers is probably worth a visit, but we restrained ourselves to looking at the map of the local area, before deciding to cut off a small loop in the route and take another minor road. Quite why we took this decision escapes me now, but in the rain it seemed like a good idea. Of course our attempt to take the 'alternative' route meant a short getting lost session in the centre of Kungälv (in the rain of course) followed by a short conversation in English with a native of the town.
By the time we had reached the point where our road bacame the NSCR again the rain had stopped. So we paused and took off our by now rather wet rain gear. It was too warm to keep our waterproofs on so we cycled on with no protection against road spray resulting from the considerable amounts of standing water. Still on the plus side we'd left Sweden's Trafford Park behind together with our navigation irritations of the morning and the scenery was back to being lovely. We were wondering where the sea had gone though.
The terrain was now somewhat less flat and we were now doing some climbing. The only slight problem we had was trying to work out whether to wear rain gear or not. The intermittent rain was more like drizzle or heavy mist, and with the climbs putting us into first gear there was no breeze to speak of. At half twelve we were ready for lunch and rather fortuitously at the end of a climb this lovely spot appeared. We found a place to sit, next to the public barbeque, and put the kettle on, before we noticed just how welcome we were. As we were sitting eating a German family complete with children and the regulation Ortlieb (or was it Vaude?) bags arrived and we exchanged greetings and smiles.