Day Thirty One Friday 19th August

Once all the blinds are closed it doesn't really affect us where we are overnight - although last night my good night's sleep was helped by earplugs to dull the traffic noise and the noise of the rain. A mooch around Biltema before leaving produced a couple more useful purchases including a  pair of frying pans and some new chopping boards. We do get excited in these shops full of useful stuff! Very Sad!

The town of Falun, with numerous interesting possibilities on offer, was only a few miles up the road. First stop was the Copper Mine, a world heritage site, which only closed in 1992. It was the source of the colour that all the houses around here are painted. A huge site, with lots of different original buildings. It would have been easy to spend a whole day there, although neither of us was keen to go down the mine.

Having not spoken to any English people for 4+ weeks, we were surprised to come across a GB plate on a VW Autosleeper conversion in the Car Park. Not only that, it had a Cotswold Motorhomes sticker in the back like ours. G spoke to the couple who have done numerous Scandinavian holidays, and who recommended a Silver Mine not far away. We did some internet research on that and decided that, although it looked amazing, we didn't want to go down that one either.
We nearly decided to give the actual town of Falun a miss, but were very glad we didn't. We visited the old church, which was magnificent, with red brick vaulted ceiling. Lonely Planet mentioned its painted floral wall friezes, and there were also similar paintings around the ceiling arches. I have no idea how old they were, because the church history guide didn't mention them. They were rather reminiscent of Laura Ashley circa 1980, but were very attractive nonetheless.

Next was a very quick visit to the Dalarna Folkmuseum. Again, we didn't have time to do it justice. Of particular note was a 'taster' for the forthcoming "world's greatest Hagstrom exhibition' - famous guitars! The taster itself was pretty impressive. Hagstrom also make Accordians, and the reason for the accordian playing at Tallberg became clear. The Dalarna area is apparently very famous for its Accordians, having at one time had no fewer than five companies making them.

Thinking we might like to return to Falun tomorrow we set off in search of a nearby campsite. The first one was not just full but heaving - another music festival but this time definitely of the Rock variety. The second one was also full. So we gave up on Falun, and headed on in our original planned direction. G located a campsite sign on Pocket Earth, and it was very definitely third time lucky. This is a simple small site ( about 40 pitches, but a lot of them  caravans here for the season,) with some additional log cabins, in another lovely  lakeside setting, with a small cafe/restaurant. We were informed that the chef was laying on a Greek Buffet if we were interested, and we could just turn up! We needed no persuading. It was superb!