Wake up, eat breakfast, go training, eat lunch, read/explore/play with Mattias, eat, sleep.
Magnus, Lisa and Mattias were fantastic hosts for Lizzie, Lara and I.
Magnus' parents summer house is in Bovallstrand, just up the coast from Gothenburg. Most of the area is made up of people's summer houses. A good proportion of them were occupied with it being a long weekend in Sweden and we got to meet Magnus' brother and his family as well.
The area is where WOC 2016 is, this is crazily early for me to be on 'relevant terrain' but it was good to get back into the Scandi terrain before Jukola this weekend in Finland. There are a ton of rapidly sprouting blueberry/blackberry/some type of berry bushes all over the ground which makes it rather challenging to run. Each time I lifted my leg it felt like twice as much effort and invariably I ended up on the ground due to not trying hard enough.
The flies were also an issue for me, being my lovely sweaty self as soon as you stop they swarm you and some of them bite!! Apparently it's because of all the marshes but I was not a fan after falling over yet again. All good experience and means stopping to look at the scenery is not an option.
We had a few touristy excursions during the week.
First to some rock carvings from a REALLY long time ago. I did take a photo of the information board to sound really impressive with all my knowledge but it seems to have gone wayward, older than normal old stuff at least. They were pretty cool and showed how much history people have in the area compared to little new New Zealand.
We did a day trip out to the local zoo with arctic animals. Lisa and I seemed to zoom ahead of everyone, turns out birds and otters aren't all that interesting to either of us. We did get to see some very fluffy snow leopards, a creepy owl, wolves and another leopard. There was a sleepy tiger who didn't even wake up when we knocked on the glass (sorry can't read the sign, don't speak Swedish).
I tend to get a little concerned with all the wildlife out here as it's pretty extreme compared to NZ. Magnus has said that very few people actually see snakes while orienteering and the stripy ones are bad but won't kill you. And if I see a moose, don't get between baby and mum and make lots of noise, apparently all the other creatures will stay away from me, fingers crossed!
Our last full day there we went crab catching!! This is a long held family tradition that Magnus and his brother used to do every summer. Literally catching a crab than have a race with them once we had had enough. Turns out I'm quite talented at this and managed to reel them in pretty quickly.I don't think any of mine won the race but was good fun.
Before we got dropped back at the border to meet up with Eva we went back to the lolly shop, literally heaven. Row upon row of pick n mix, mmmmmmm.
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