Day 30 - One more sleep..................

I checked the watch again, it was still not even 4am and I was wide awake, not really suprising as I was asleep by 7pm the night before. I was so cosy in my 2 layers of thermals and my sleeping bag that by the time 6am rolled around and Sylv woke up I didn't want to get out of bed. At about 4.30 I thought I had heard Sylv crying and when I asked her if she was awake she said yes, are you crying? No, and she was asleep again. Later that day she told me that she thought maybe she had been crying in her sleep as she had dreamnt that 3 golden screws had screwed themsleves into her tyre giving her constant punctures. the puncture thing is really getting to her, fingers crossed we don't have anymore.

                                                            Sun coming up in the morning
Anyway after breakfast and several cups of tea on the Trangia (we had a lot of fuel left) we set off. Today was going to be a LONG one, we were heading for................................

the suburbs of Stockholm.

When we arrived in Sweden we had worked out that if we pushed hard and didn't have days off at Astrid Lindgrens Värld and if nothing went wrong we may, just may hit Stockholm in time to suprise our mum by meeting her off the plane. This thought kept both of us going when we were feeling tired and today was the day to make it happen.

We left by 8.30, brrrrrr it was cold again and very grey and drizzling but we hammered it and managed to do 20 miles in 1.5 hours. Not bad when our panniers our super heavy.

On and on we pressed. not wanting to stop as we knew we had to reach Tumba before the light faded, then, there it was silhoutted against the dark grey sky, another Elk. Oh yeah. We think this one was a lady Elk as it was smaller than the other one. We watched her scamper accross the road and lithley leap over the electric fences and off into the woods. Utterly wonderful creatures.

We had to cross a big estuary today but it wasn't clear from the map how we were going to do it, so you can imagine my joy when we got there and it was a ferry crossing. Hooray.

It was lovely and the sun had come out. We crossed and had our lunch on the other side looking out over the estuary full of little islands, bliss.

Right, let's get back on it. Time was running out and the light was beggining to fade as we rode down the hill to Tumba. Oh my goodness today has been hilly and our legs were killing us. Then we got very lost for about an hour, we just couldn't find the right road and went up (and back down) several different steep hills trying to find our way out. Eventually we did and found ourselves on the worlds busiest road at rush hour, so this is where all  the cars are. We stuck to the edge and luckilly after a few km we found our turning and road up to a mansion.

The hostel was round the back in an out house, but boy was it pure luxury. It even had a free washing machine which we took full advantage of. The receptionist Pia was lovely and was really pleased to see us. She told us that the mansion used to belong to Lars Ericsson (you will know him from the Sony Ericsson phones).

We cooked up and had a celebratory weak beer and although we had planned to stay up late we were tucked up in bed by 8.30. We are so so nearly there........................................

Miles today 65-70