Wednesday 29th July 2026

It was a beautiful morning in the middle of nowhere. We had shared our parking place with this French registered van overnight. We managed to wash and have breakfast using some of our stock of bottled water as without a working water pump no water would come out of our taps or toilet flush. I discovered online that a motorhome dealer near Umea on the Gulf of Bothnia had a water pump of the type we use in stock. The only problem is the dealer is 250 kilometres (155 miles) away to the south east!

We set off travelleing south east intially on almost empty roads so we could make very good progress. We stopped at this rest area to empty our toilet cassette. The woman from the white van seen here has just emptied and cleaned out two cassettes which are on the paving outside her van. She is unlikely to be caught short!

We stopped again for a drink and a biscuit (or two or three).

We arrived at the dealer's at about 12.30 where I bought and fitted the new water pump. 

We moved on the short distance to a parking place next to a hay meadow which was being cut at the time. We saw lots of Cranes flying over. These are very large birds. We had this unrealistic idea to go and eat out at a restaurant in Umea. I programmed a stop at the car park next to the restaurant followed by a stop next to an estuary at Obbola into the sat nav and we set off. I became totally confused as the sat nav, instead of taking us tto the restaurant, took us to our proposed stop for the day!

When we finally got to the car park by the restaurant, the car park was totally full and the restaurant packed out at 16.00 on a Wednesday. We returned to Obbola and stopped for the day.

This is the parking place for visiting a nature reserve which is on a island in the estuary accessed by the footbridge seen here.

Instead of fancy food in the city centre we had vegetable stew for our tea. Very nice.

Today we travelled 178 miles (287 kilometres). We are at: N63.75239 E20.30928

Obbola    Street View December 2021