The Way Here

I was going to write about our first Swedish Christmas, but the muse dictates that that will have to wait a while and I’m going to write about where we live.  You can, of course, Google Map it and even travel down the frightfully busy main road that runs just a hundred metres as the woodpecker flies from our little house.  When I say busy, G looks at me in a funny way, but I mean that there are cars passing at least once every few minutes at rush hour and about three per 15 min in the rest of the day.  The lorries (about 2x the tonnage of the largest UK trucks) are the loudest and are what we hear from the house even during the summer, when the green screens most of the noise.  The road had gotten to be so busy that it had to be widened by 1.5m each side last year, which did cause a bit of a fuss, but it is easier to walk and cycle along it now and, and and we have cycle path all the way to Nyhem. Of course, there is not that constant hum that is the background noise of London, and it’s definitely not the A40, which was about the same distance as the pigeon flies.  The road has become so much busier than in the golden days of my youth because it is a good cut through to the motorway from Stockholm to Göteborg (Gothenburg) and has the added attraction of general scenicness.  There is the added weight of the building explosion (oooh, I can feel G’s look from here).

Our drive starts with a gate, which Evil S put in and requires us to keep shut at all times, even when there are no cows in the field.  We know this, because it is wired shut if we leave it open. Fun, fun, fun!  The drive follows the ‘olde roade’, which was the main way to Mullsjö for about 3000 years and most of which E.S. has allowed to fall into disrepair and oblivion. The drive poodles along parallel to the road for about 100m and passes over 2 cattle grids, runs down the little valley and then wends its way up the hill, through the birch and pine trees to our little house for about 300m.  Near the house, it’s soft with pine needles and sandy mud that feels like silk on the feet.  Otherwise it’s mud and cow muck and stones.  It needs to be renewed quite often, cos Evil S keeps doing stupid things like putting the cow feeder at the bend in the valley, so the cows stop there and churn up the road.  He then complains that we are being unreasonable when we ask for it to be moved further away and can he now pay for the damage please... now, not next year!

The house is a little red ‘summer’ house, which stands on the top of a sandy hill (225m for those interested) overlooking the Stråken lake.  It’s next to the larger gray, round house of one of my aunts, contrasting the effects of architect vs kit rather effectively.  The houses are right up against the limit of building regs that say no new houses can be built nearer than 200m from lakes.  ES has planted firs on the (previously) protected environmentally significant sandy bank going down to the lake in an effort to stop us seeing the view, bless him...

 

Goodness, I do believe that my new obsession are roads!  Wonder how long that will last before I get beaten over the head by a kindly passer-by?  One can but hope.