We drove south from Stockholm towards Kalmar, along the east coast. Our intention was to stay in Kalmar and visit their famous castle but the campsite was fully booked when we arrived, so we headed over the bridge onto Öland Island and found a lovely campsite by the sea and right next to a crazy Reggae festival, you could hear the music from our caravan, it was o-so tempting to gate crash. We saw hoards of people merrily walking up to the gates-we were green with envy!! Oh and Jake got his boxing gloves out and tried to make friends with Ester, the very passive and well behaved Swedish lady boxer from next door!

We spent a day on the island. The weather was lovely, apparently it has it’s own mini micro climate, so the sun shines regularly and you could tell by the parched grass, a nice welcome after our recent string of soggy Swedish pitches (tan fading rapidly btw!). Driving through the Öland countryside was seriously picturesque, old wooden windmills dotted the landscape and little hamlets full of old well kept barns cropped up every now and again along the country roads.

We made our way south of the island to Eketorp fort, an old Iron Age fortress. We hesitated at the entrance, contemplating not going in as the entrance fee was pretty pricey (typical Sweden we thought!), but we could see the fort in the distance and couldn’t resist seeing it. So we delved deep, stuck on our entrance sticker and walked down the windy lane to the fort. We entered the circular structure into a mini village. There were people shooting bows and arrows, men dressed up all Iron Age-y smelting metal to make jewellery and women giving cooking demonstrations. We walked around taking it all in, kids ran around mega excited dressed up in armoury (dam-if only we were 7 again!). We wondered into old storerooms and barns that were once houses, there was a forgery where a man was making weapons, spotted pigs were trotting around our feet snorting loudly, and actors, dressed up, were creating scenes from back in the day. The place was buzzing.

Back at camp the reggae festival was still in full swing-one for next year maybe!?