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Where am I?:^mistymornings-->Cycletouring-->2007-->Scandinavia.-->Day 7

Day 7-1. Hällevikstrand to Hamburgsund

Distance 87km Average 15.8km/hr Max 54.6km/hr Time 5:30 hrs.

This was going to be a slow start. We escaped the mosquito homeland quite early and quickly headed into town pausing only to take a picture of this curious church. In 'town' we ate breakfast showered and changed into clean clothing. Luckily there were no mosquitos here, and hence the sounds around us were normal ones and not the constant hummmmmmm of hundreds of the little blighters. The showers were at the marina and after five kroners of warm water (yes to our pleasant surprise this one took five kroner pieces) I felt somewhat human again. Damae followed me into the shower and we then had some breakfast and a cuppa. Another piece of good news was that it was finally sunny again after the rather changeable weather of the day before.

Our general direction was to be North today and after cycling past the rest of the village and the waiting bus, we were off again. Although our overnight stop had been beautiful we had been rather focussed on the hordes of mosquitos. Cycling holiday resolution of the day was to take the big MSR Wind-4 tent in the event of a cycle trip to Sweden, especially if camping wild. Our reasoning was and is that you can live comfortably in the Wind-4, hidden behind several acres of mosquito netting, which is a lot nicer than being confined to the inner tent of a two and a half man tent. The extra three kilograms of weight would be well worth the significant increase in comfort for a longer tour.

Damae noted this down in her diary and added a couple of her own to the list of painfully aquired wisdom; "New lesson (or new rule) use MSR [Wind ed.] 4 tent in Sweden, camping wild is not very [much ed.] fun -> when there is a choice go for the campsite. If there is no campsite sign then do not go that way." Still these were things for a future trip and with that sorted we started to relax and enjoy the beautiful countryside again. Today was to be the day of ferries two small ones and a longer one, and a reasonable distance cycled given the marathon the day before and the rapidly rising temperatures.

One of the advantages of the route in this area was the quietness of the roads and we were able to concentrate less on the cycling and more on the sightseeing. We arrived at the first of the ferries at Malö and waited for a while, wondering when the ferry would make its way over to our side. Maybe this was the first ferry of the day, as we had discovered that the Swedish summer officially ends a couple of weeks before the Norwegian summer does. We had been a bit non-plussed by this revelation as the weather had been generally fantastic. We could not understand why you would want to go back to work instead of lazing around in the sun.

A few cars turned up and the ferry which was waiting on the other side of the river started loading up. This ferry and the second one were bigger versions of the cable ferries to be found at the numerous crossing points of the big Dutch rivers. Both Damae and I found the mechanism interesting and we took photos of it and the view (oh and a couple of Stan). We like ferries, and think that they are generally a good idea as they provide an enforced break in your day. Sometimes when fatigue sets in we can forget to stop to rest and eat and drink. Of course sometimes (as on the trike trip earlier in the year) it can be annoying if you miss the last ferry of the day (or the season), but on balance they are usually fun.

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