We spent the night in Bastad on an enormous grass car park. When we originally plonked Basil on one of the few stopping places clearly more than big enough for his ample size, we had wondered why a small town like Bastad needed so much space for visiting vehicles. Sarah’s discovery, while hurriedly writing last night’s blog, that Bastad is the home to the Swedish Tennis Open, suddenly made sense of the mystery.

Sarah and the dogs

After having had breakfast, on our own, in a field big enough to accommodate several several thousand cars, we headed for our last stop in Sweden Ystad, which the lady in the tourist office told me was pronounced something like “oo-stat”.

The journey took a couple of hours on the motorway, where the countryside has finally shed any pretence of being Scandinavian, and now looked like the rest of Northern Europe – covered in high intensity agriculture. We did see one “beware of the moose” sign, but I think the moose in question must have been lost.

Our not very extensive journey through Sweden has revealed two unexpected Swedish passions. The first one is golf. There seems to be golf courses or signs to golf courses everywhere. I am aware that Sweden has had some very successful professional golfers over the past thirty years and I presume this is what has driven the proliferation of the game. The second enthusiasm is for American cars. We’ve seen far more big American cars, most of them classic, but some modern, than we have seen anywhere else on this trip. We have absolutely no idea of the reason but make the observation nonetheless.

Yet another American car – this time in Ystad

We finally reached Ystad at lunchtime and had a quick bite to eat before setting out to explore the town. These days Ystad is a small town, but it does play host to a ferry port, with ferries sailing to both Poland and the Danish Baltic island of Bornholm.

Ystad street

Sarah, the dogs and I spent a very enjoyable hour or two wandering the picturesque streets. Ystad was a member of the Hanseatic League and much of the major pieces of architecture are the typical Hanseatic League brick gothic. There are a few small streets with half timbered houses and at this time of year the streets are full of hollyhocks and roses growing up the front of these cottages.

Ystad Monastery

The two old monumental buildings in the town are a magnificent monastery and a rather dour looking medieval church, both built out of brick. The monastery is very large and now houses a museum. The grounds are home to some lovely formal gardens. The church architecture is very plain on the outside. The inside, however, is ornate, which I would have thought was a little unusual for a Lutheran church. The paintings are however, mostly of upright Lutheran men and women in plain black and white dress.

Ystad church and a medieval house

Ystad’s modern claim to fame is as the home of Henning Mankell’s Wallander detective. Although the tourist office was full of Wallander books for sale, there was very little obvious reference to the character around the town. People used to the British version of Wallander staring Kenneth Brannagh, will be surprised by how pretty the town and the surrounding countryside is, given that the cinematography always makes the area look grim, presumably to reflect Wallander’s never very cheery mood!

House in Ystad

Our mood wasn’t so cheery when, for the second day in a row, a grey cloud sneaked up out of a clear blue sky and gave us a good soaking on our walk from the town centre back to Basil.

Door of the day

Ystad has several places for motorhomes to stay overnight. There is one on the marina, which is very convenient if you wish to be within walking distance of the town centre, but is not free. However we, having finished in the town, have parked on a nicely delineated free motorhome aire on the outskirts of Ystad (55.424864, 13.786665). Basil’s nose is poking into the Baltic and there is nothing between him and Germany on the opposite side of the sea.

Tomorrow the plan is to move to a campsite on the outskirts of Copenhagen.There is a motorhome aire 2km from the centre, but I have discovered that at this time of year the campsite is actually cheaper than the aire. It pays to check – sometimes you find the unexpected.