Day Twenty Five Saturday 13th August

After all the rain yesterday today started off again with blue skies and sunshine, and the campsite was transformed and really lovely. Ristes, you would love it here.
We spent some time looking up some local possibilities and settled on a visit  to Marbacka near Sunne, the home of the prolific Swedish writer Selma Lagerlof. Much to our embarrassment and the surprise of those at the house we had never heard of her. She died in 1940 requesting that the childhood home which she had repurchased and renovated be left as it was for people to visit. She was the first Swede and the first woman to win the Nobel prize for literature, and quite a phenomenal character. She is apparently known worldwide for her 'wonderful Adventures of Nils Holgersson' which was written for schoolchildren to both learn to read and learn about their country. It is about a naughty boy who is turned into an elf and travels the country with some geese, during which time through his adventures he becomes a reformed character. Not my usual reading genre, but I'm giving it a go. She is better loved on Sweden for her other works - novels, poetry, letters and autobiographical books. We were told that Swedish people don't like the Nils Holgersson stories because they had to read them at school. It was a beautiful place in its own right, and fascinating to learn about her life and works. We lunched in the cafe there.
We travelled on in the direction of Lake Siljan keeping a fairly open mind as to an overnight stop. We had read about a Nature Reserve called Hovfjallet which sounded interesting. After a long drive up a deserted road we arrived - it was a winter ski resort and looked very forlorn and deserted, and pretty depressing. We also encountered what I think were our first Swedish mossies. With the scars from my first set of bites 3 weeks ago almost gone, I don't intend to go out of my way to attract more. So I let G explore a bit, and enjoy the far-reaching views before we descended again. By now the rain had set in again too, but we have found an acceptable free stopover in a Rastplatz just outside Malung.