Today’s is a short post, partly because it has been largely a driving day and secondly because we are running late.
After struggling to find anywhere of interest to break our journey to the southern town of Ystad, I finally found, what is supposed to be, one of the prettiest towns in Sweden. To someone from the North of England, and I suspect others, the town’s name is anything but pretty – Bastad!
Most of the day was spent ploughing south on the excellent and free Swedish motorways although Sarah did have an exciting start to the day, when only a few miles into the journey we stopped at a LIDL – the first for five weeks or more!
As we moved south the forests began to thin out and be replaced by large swathes of agricultural land. The problem with Sweden’s countryside, for us, is that having now been through Finland and Norway it doesn’t really compare. It is, in parts, very similar to Finland and so if we had come to Sweden first, it would have been Finland that would have got the wrong end of our apathy.
We drove though the outskirts of Gothenburg, which has something no city of its size deserves – two IKEAs! Sarah was keen to have a look, but Basil seemed strangely unmoved by the request.
Bastad
After 180 miles we finally arrived in Bastad and can confirm it is a quite attractive town. It is located on the sea and clearly the favourite summertime haunt of wealthy individuals – you can tell from the size of the yachts in the marina. It also has one of the most unusual church towers I have ever seen. It is almost like a brick gothic house which has grown too tall.
Bastad Church
We were puzzled by the presence, in this small town, of the Swedish National Tennis Museum. After exploring the town a bit further we found a tennis complex in the centre, with a decent sized show court and at least one other. A quick a search on Google reveals it holds the Swedish Open when the town plays host to over 200,000 visitors. It has apparently been voted the favourite ATP tournament by players for the last 11 years.
The main show court in Bastad – can you see that grey cloud coming?
The weather has been pleasant and sunny all day except, of course, when we got to the furthest point possible from Basil on our walk, when a black cloud appeared and soaked us all.
Bastad
Bastad has kindly provided a place for motorhomes to stay overnight on a large grassy area (56.433955, 12.829798). The charge is only 50 SEK (€5.23) a night, but for that there are toilets but no other facilities.
Tomorrow we have a shorter drive to Ystad, where I hope there will be no murders for Wallander to solve.