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  • This weekend gone I took a couple of days off work and headed to Sweden, to meet a friend of mine who lives out there. From Stockholm we got a ferry to Gotland, a large Swedish island in the middle of the Baltic. After camping one night by the shore in the main town of Visby (your right to camp anywhere you like in Sweden is very well known and enshrined in law), we got up early and rented bikes:

    As you can see they were not exactly touring bikes but they performed admirably, and they were pretty hip with no derailleurs, gumwall tyres, retro quill stem and seatpost, porteur bars and baskets. The three hub gears worked out pretty well with one gear for road, one for off-road and one for off-road uphill.

    http://ridewithgps.com/routes/2661996

    Day 1 was absolutely beautiful. Sunny and 25 degrees by the balmy Baltic. We explored the coastline and found a little fishing village where we had freshly smoked salmon and mackerel for lunch, hiked up a nice little cliff and generally enjoyed ourselves very much.

    In the evening we spotted a nice little place to put up our tent next to a beautifully still and warm lake, and made dinner over a camp fire, which was a magnificent feast of pulled pork with baked beans, jacket potates and barbecued stickbread, washed down with rum and cokes. At this stage we were feeling very good about the whole trip.

    Day 2, after happening upon a little hut selling saffron pancakes for breakfast, we got a small ferry to the island of Fårö, which is a lot wilder and more deserted than mainland Gotland and in some places pretty barren, but also with lovely pine forests and sandy beaches.

    http://ridewithgps.com/routes/2662011

    This was another awesome day, with the only negative being when we were attacked by gannets, who repeatedly dive-bombed us, making an awful racket and pecking at our heads. Thankfully they peeled away after a few minutes, presumably after we had got far enough away from their babies. We found another beautiful spot to camp, on the sea shore this time, and ate spaghetti with chorizo, pepper and chili.

    The third day was more head-down and hurry home sort of affair, but still beautiful weather and nice views. We couldn't resist stopping once for a swim in another gorgeous lake, but we made up lots of the time we lost on that when an extremely fast grandma on a mountain bike joined us for a little bit and did an enormous turn on the front, into a horrible headwind.

    http://ridewithgps.com/routes/2662017

    We arrived back in Visby for celebratory Gotland beer and an exploration of the town, before setting up camp and then getting the ferry back to Stockholm very early the next morning.

    The whole trip was awesome, and I'd really recommend Gotland. The roads are awesome, the scenery fantastic, and the drivers are rare and very considerate - they almost always pass you with all four wheels fully in the other lane of the road.

    A few more images here, should anyone be interested: http://imageshack.us/g/1/10190530/

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