Sondag - homeward bound

In preparation for the ride on Saturday night the team had all studied the laws concerning cycling in Sweden, consequently the week leading up to the ride was spent frantically calling friends with children asking to borrow bells and reflectors both of which are mandatory.  Soon after the start of the race we noticed that very few of the local riders had bothered to comply making us wonder if we had wasted our time.  As the ride progressed we found that the bells were an excellent way of finding each other in a dark group and warning other lesser riders we were coming through.  Something else we noticed was not a single Swedish rider had a bell fitted, I later quizzed one of them about this and he explained the reason was obvious, Sweden is the birthplace of the Nobel prize....

Apropos of nothing here is a picture I forgot to use the other day of Motala's famous bike sculpture with my faithful machine grafted onto the end.  I believe my bike deserves a place in the pantheon of cycling greats as it has seen me from Le to Jog as well as through Vatternrundan.  Perhaps next year it the sculptor will have decided to add it in recognition of this.

Motala bike sculpture and friend

Today's programme was wake up when we felt like it pack up our stuff then hit the road.  Oh and empty the chemical toilets, luckily each motorhome was host to a non-driver who was designated 'bus bitch' so that unenviable task fell to Padrig and Francois (I am fairly sure Padrig is not spelled like that but he is asleep so it's too late to ask).  In a bizzare outbreak of efficiency we were on the road

by 08:00.  Instead of what I understood to be the plan of breaking up the journey Le Mans fever seemed to have hit the team and it was decided to push on through to the tunnel with the idea of arriving home as early as possible.  In retrospect I agree with the plan as it will enable me to have a nap in my own bed before perhaps visiting the pub for dinner (no perhaps about it, it is a weekday.)

View of the road this morning

Dan took the wheel for the first stint taking us from Motala to the self same Pizza hut where the earlier 'fart' picture was taken.  We had a delicious pizza hut lunch with a pizza for 2 - 4 persons each.  This gave us enough leftovers for an evening meal.  This visit I decided to go native and try 

lingenberry juice with my meal, it was rather nice but lacked fizz, the subsequent Lingenberry juice and Sprite cocktail went some way toward fixing this but was sadly disgusting.

My turn driving followed lunch, this was a strategic move on my part as it meant I would definately not be asleep for the spectacular Malmo to Stockholm Oresund bridge, at least that was the hope of my three passengers.  The bridge was everything I hoped it would be and more, I had hoped it would be a bridge but it turned out to be a bridge tunnel combo.  In quieter moments have often imagined the majesty that would be bestowed on the world if the Dartford bridge and tunnel were laid end to end, today got me a bit closer to realising that dream.

It took ages to get the angle on this picture just right

The main noteworthy thing about Denmark is it is very windy which is not necessarily an ideal thing to combined with a national love of high bridges and a high sided motorhome, still this further ensured I didn't fall asleep as a momentary lapse in concentration would have seen us plummeting into the North Sea where either the impact or the freezing waters would risk making my knee hurt even more.

We didn't stop in Denmark yet they managed to relieve us of over £100 in road tolls, not a bad way to prop up the economy when Lego sales are down.  Following Denmark I handed over driving duties to Jon and made up the bed in order to take a well earned sleep.  

As a mark of respect for the earlier tiring stints Dan and I had driven Jon and Padrig decided to play a game of name the song from the intro, a game that apparently can't be played at anything other than full volume (in fact now I think of it perhaps I could wake Padrig and ask him a spelling question.) I was torn between telling them to pipe down and my love of doing stuff I can almost certainly win at.  Naturally my winning instinct kicked in and I was able to dominate the quiz which remarkably continued for almost three hours despite my outscoring the losers by a ratio of 8.3:1.

Jon's stint took us half way down Germany, I assume.  At least it ended somewhere in Germany.  Dan then took over for his second leg and I had another go at sleeping, this was somewhat more successful than my first go but still not that good, it was relatively early still meaning it wasn't technically bed time. Dan then put in a heroic effort to drive the remainder of Germany, all of Holland, all of Belgium and all of France.  No mean feat.  I emerged from the van zombie like at a couple of service stations for ablutions but that was the most I contributed.  Dan probably drove over 400 miles on this leg.

Talking of mileage something I have noticed when on cycling events in the UK and in Sweden is the inaccuracy of the mile markers.  I can imagine when setting up for Vattenrundan two Swedes, Benny and Bjorn, going out in their Volvo to set up the route markers armed with a pickled herring lunch and some Lingenberries and having several conversations along the lines of :

"....but Bjorn the rest stop is 3km from here...."   

"never mind Benny the 1km marker will be fine here" 

"but we will get fired when somebody notices"....

"who cares we have our ABBA royalties to fall back on."  

I am fairly amazed they were bothering and it perhaps explains the half arsed job, but I suppose it keeps them out of writing shit musicals about chess.

We made it to the tunnel at about 3:33 local time and were waved almost straight on to the next train.  Being so early the duty free was closed, for this I apologise in advance to any of my colleagues who are reading no Toblerone for you.  Luckily we did have time to take a really rubbish photo.  

told you it was rubbish

The train seemed to travel super slowly as if the driver was not trying to annoy anyone along the route.  Someone should tell them it is in a tunnel and fish are mostly nocturnal.  Even if that last fact is wrong it is definitely true to say they can't write complaint letters.

Tardy train driving aside we arrived back in Blighty sometime before 5:00AM which was ideal timing if your idea of fun was the M25 in the rush hour.  Still at least it wasn't my turn to drive......rat's c**ks it was.  

Tomorrow / later today I will do a final Sweden post, mainly to upload all the photos that I didn't have the patience to upload when working on a patchy cellular internet connection.