Day 11: En Route to Malmo

For the observant amongst you, you'll have noticed that Day 10 failed to exist.
Yesterday, was a bit of a mixed bag to say the least, the train from Kiruna finally dragged it's sorry arse into Gavle station at about 9:30am (over an hour and a half late!). Even the big-wigs at First Great Western might have felt slightly embarrassed about that, although they'd have no doubt re-lit their fat cigars and the world would be a happy place once more.
I digress, from Gavle it was a couple of hours on train, then a couple of hours on bus to Yttermalung. There was a short, rather amusing Benny Hill-type, rushing about of people between platforms and lots of shrugging shoulders as no-one had any real idea if the train we were boarding was the correct one, or not - badly announced platform changes are always fun!
It was the right train and my journey to Yttermalung went smoothly from here on. I, sadly, only had one day in Yttermalung but made the most of it. Walking, cycling, moose-burgers, beer, chess, putting the world to rights (always love that!), using the Swedish-patented cheese slicer, Princess cake, Bruce Springstein, Lou Reed, a bit of modelling and a moose-hunt.
For those of you who have never seen a moose, they are about 6 foot tall, there are thousands of them across Sweden and they look alarmingly like christmas trees - my mistake, they were christmas trees. Where the hell are all the moose then? I did see a fox, a bat, a grouse and a hawk - everything in Sweden that is also native to the UK!
I must, at this point, say the most massive thank you to the lovely Anna and her charming family who tried in vain to find a moose and made my 22 hours in the beautiful Dala region an absolute delight.
So this morning, as I got on my umpteenth train, yet again I felt pangs of sadness about moving-on to my next location. If this trip was twice as long I would still feel that there were things that remained un-finished and needed to be done. I am currently on my second train of the day and have a bus transfer and another train still to come before my arrival in Malmo in approximately 5 hours from now - a total of 9 hours travel today. A nice shower, couple of beers and a comfy bed await me, with any luck I'll be feeling in good shape and ready to tackle tomorrows half-marathon!
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