What a start to the day!! No doubt you recall my brief little treatise on ticks and Julie's careful avoidance strategy? Well it was to no avail as she found one buried into her stomach, well and truly stuck in. It was tiny and dark but definitely a tick, a tick that I’m afraid I failed in removing entirely with tweezers initially, so poor Julie had to endure at least 10 minutes of my picking away with needle and tweezers to remove the incredibly well stuck-in head and mouthparts. She was very brave, only wincing occasionally. Once out, we treated the wound with some antibiotic ointment and covered it with a plaster. How did it get there and how come it took 2 days? Well my theory is that it detached itself from the end of a bit of grass onto Julie’s trousers and these may have been placed on or near the bed, when it dropped off and attached itself to Julie some time later. Lesson learned, we need to check clothes as well as ourselves when we’ve been walking in the countryside around here. Of course, we will be very cognisant of Julie’s health over the next few days, any hint of a feeling of unwell-ness and we’ll head for the nearest doctor.

Drama over, it was our day off today from travelling northwards and we were determined to make the most of it . Our first tourist site was to be the maritime museum but as this was not due to open until 11:00, we had time to do some shopping and grab a quick coffee. Sweden is expensive, most items seem to be 130 -150% of UK prices. Moreover, as I said earlier, you can’t buy liquor or wine or beer > 3.5% gravity anywhere other than in government liquor stores but we decided to acquire some of the lighter beer to see what it was like.

We set off to visit the maritime museum and saw that the McCubbin’s were in town, Milvina was on a nearby pontoon. There was no obvious sign of life on board so we decided to leave well alone and try later.

As I said earlier, Karlskrona is a navy town, becoming so in 1680, soon after this part of Sweden stopped being Danish, thereby allowing King Karl XI to take advantage of its ice-free nature in winter and to move the Swedish fleet there from Stockholm. Work then commenced in earnest to fortify the immediate area and so effective was the work that it was placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as a fine example of a fortified naval base of this period – not that that was the aim when it was first constructed! The aim of the museum is to explain the town’s history and of course, to house some of the artefacts from this period .

It’s a fine modern building and with the aid of free audio guides, we set off to listen and learn. The first room we came to was the model room. Today, designs are kept on computer, in previous times they were on blueprints but in the 17^th and 18^th century, design knowledge was stored and passed on by means of models, models of ships, cranes, guns – in fact anything that had to be manufactured. It really was quite fascinating seeing them and thinking in those terms. Other rooms housed weaponry (of course) and one hall, at the end of the building, had some magnificent figureheads, in superb condition.

One disappointment was the underwater gallery. You descended some stairs and ended up in a darkened tunnel with windows that theoretically, gave you views of old wooden timbers etc from sunken vessels from the period. Well there may have been some there but peering through murky greenish water at a small plank is not that fascinating! Equally disappointing was the whole of the upper floor, devoted to the Cold War period and consisting of not very much more than a few people’s recollections of the time . Still, we enjoyed the first few sections so it was worth a visit, but I’m not sure if I would recommend it, given that it cost £18.00 or thereabouts for the two of us.

We were going to have lunch in the museum but it consisted of a tired looking buffet of cooling off meats and quite expensive so instead, we went back to the boat for a buttie then after coffee, went to see the centre of the town. This didn’t take very long, it has a large square (one of the largest in N Europe, we are told) and a couple of churches, both of which are not very ornate and not that interesting. I seem down on Karlskrona don’t I! Another disappointment was the ice cream. The guide talks about the best ice-cream in the world – all I can say is if quantity is a measure then perhaps, but as for flavour most definitely not, Julie’s marzipan & chocolate was just plain sweet and not flavoursome and my tiramisu was a very poor, sweet copy of the wonderful stuff we’ve had in Italy in the past. So there!

Back to the boat and some healthy exercise . I’d decided that just in case the automated fuel pump in a nearby marina wasn’t working and as by now our tank was only half full, I resolved to walk to a nearby Jet station with my empty diesel jerrycan to ferry fuel back to the boat. I figured that 5 or 6 journeys should do it and with the aid of an appropriated supermarket trolley that was in the marina, I achieved my aim. During this time Neil & Helen McC appeared so we invited them for drinks later.

We had a pleasant 90 minutes or so, during which Helen attempted to teach me the art of making a Turk’s Head (indeed, she very kindly left us two examples, surrounding night lights, later that night and we only spotted them upon our departure ). Dinner consisted of chicken salad, the chicken coming pre-cooked from the supermarket. Not a 'happy chicken’ ie free range, I don’t suppose but it was convenient and tasted ok too.