This was to be our last day in this pleasant town and we planned on seeing some of the surrounding countryside, so I busied myself getting the bikes out and unfolded, oiled up and tyres pumped, ready for the off. We hadn't wanted a mega-excursion on the first outing, past experience has shown us that one gets surprisingly stiff from cycling and one’s anatomy which comes in contact with the saddle takes some breaking in, it really does get easier with use! Anyway, off we set in the direction of Gränsö Slott, which is supposedly a very beautiful and peaceful area. Slott means castle but we didn’t find one, rather we found a sort of manor house that now seemed to be a hotel but that was it. It was a pretty area, very peaceful with nice houses dotted about and glimpses of the water between the trees. A pleasant first outing.

We got back to the boat around lunch time and after which, I installed some software on the computer that would enable a device I have to accentuate the wifi signal, making it far more reliable in the boat . This done and as there are so few boats here using the facilities, I decided to hog the wifi network and download some programmes, specifically the last two episodes of 'Homeland’ which ran after we left the UK (an excellent series on some American soldiers who had been ‘turned’ by the Taliban and were up to no good back in the USA) and the whole series of ‘The Bridge’, which is another Scandinavian thriller that we missed. I got these by installing micro-Torrent, which enables you to download programmes from sites that specialise in storing them – not 100% legal I don’t think but we’re not doing anybody any harm….

After a short ride into town to shop, there wasn’t much more to do other than prepare the boat and cook dinner. I made a Thai prawn curry, very good it was too! Finally, one point of note, there is a small wooded promontory nearby with a pond containing great crested grebes nesting and during the late evening, I was charmed to hear a nightingale in full voice. Considering they aren’t huge birds, they can really belt it out!