Our ride was from our base in Vadstena to Bergs Slussar. It was broken into three 12-mile sections. Phillip drew the route showing sections ending in Motala, Borensberg – our lunch site – and Bergs Slussar with a shuttle back to Vadstena.

Ross did all three; I did the last two. Rain threatened all day and the wind this morning was fairly strong. I thought I heard someone say 40 mile-an-hour wind gusts which is why I skipped the first section.

Our groups met up at Motala and the next 12-mile section was very enjoyable. We started out briefly along the Göta Canal.

This 120-mile canal was built around 1830 to connect western Sweden with the Baltic Sea through a series of dug waterways and natural bodies of water. Then we veered away from the canal to travel through farm land among the red barns.

Including this really big red barn.

We had a couple of tricky sections of washboard gravel at the bottom of otherwise really nice downhills – and we had some protection from the wind. We were supposed to have a picnic lunch but the threat of rain resulted in us going to a pizzeria in Borensberg.

Ross was happy with his pear juice and the pizza margherita we had was the best pizza of the trip.

The third section was entirely along the canal.

This bike path was mostly gravel and we had to focus a lot on the road, but we did stop to watch several boats go by.

And we stopped to check out the sheep along the track.

The rain that had threatened all day finally started just as we were finishing the ride and we took shelter under a canopy.

Later we checked out the seven locks at Bergs Slussar and watched two boats being lowered from one to another. A mother duck was quacking along the edge of the first lock and when I looked down about ten feet, I saw two little babies swimming and quacking back. The lock was refilling with water so we hoped the water level soon got them back up to where their mother was.

Then we boarded our bus for the short trip back to Vadstena. Dinner was on our own and we had hamburgers at a nearby pub and watched World Cup action on tv. The bartender told us it was not windy in Vadstena; he had been to Chicago and that was windy!

Great day!