We spent the night on our free camper stop on the outskirts of Ystad with rain periodically hammering on Basil’s bonce all night long and the sound of crashing waves resounding in our ears. I’ve lost count of the number of nights we’ve spent within earshot of the sea on this trip. More than all the rest of my life combined I would guess.
Today we said goodbye to Sweden. We have by no means done it justice. We always intended to leave Stockholm for another time, but Sweden has not caught our imagination. I think it is a combination of a poor guide book (Lonely Planet Scandinavia – that’s you) and the fact that we have just finished nine weeks in Finland and Norway and are a bit Scandied out. I think that as a standalone country, especially if you travel north, it must have the same attractions as Finland and the mountain sections of Norway. The far south, however, is a little bit bland. Today as we travelled on the motorway Sarah said “we could be in England” and it was true – rolling hills of wheat interspersed with copses of deciduous trees.
The exiting bit of the journey to Copenhagen was the crossing of the Bridge. That is the Oresund Bridge which links Malmo in Sweden with Copenhagen in Denmark. The bridge is five miles long, but then the bridge leads you down onto an island and the road then plunges into a 2.5 mile tunnel to complete the crossing. The toll is even more impressively large than the bridge itself. For Basil it was €110!!
The bridge courtesy of Sarah’s iPhone
I had previously looked at taking a ferry instead, but I’ve got a feeling there is some surreptitious price fixing going on, because the ferry between Helsingborg in Sweden and Helsingor in Denmark is only a 3 mile crossing but they wanted €85 to take Basil!! We decided it was worth paying the extra to experience the bridge but in reality it was not really much more interesting than driving over any other bridge – it just took longer and the switch from bridge to tunnel half way across was different.
We are now ensconced in Absalon Camping (55.672703, 12.431097), which is about 8 km out of Copenhagen although still within the general urban sprawl. At this time of year it has only cost us 210 DK (€28) a night, which is much cheaper than the main motorhome aire in the city, which is often described as “being packed in like sardines”. We, on the other had, have a very large pitch and full facilities. Absalon Camping is also the headquarters of the Danish Camping Union or some such and is consequently a very well managed site, albeit huge. Wifi is extra, but there is good 3G so it is not essential and the price list says dogs are charged extra, a first for us this trip, but no one asked me about dogs when we checked in so at the moment the dogs are walking around with dark glasses hoping not to be spotted!
It is our intention to do another free walking tour tomorrow. It is a 10 minute walk from here to the station and a 12 minute train ride to the centre. The weather, like today, is forecast to be sunshine and showers so we may be somewhat bedraggled by the end of the day, because having dogs means it is often difficult to find anywhere to shelter.