Gotland 2010 – day 17

After breakfast in the RV and a quick check on the weather, 19 C and wheels at 11 a.m we started driving north west towards Visby (the capital), but today was going to be a geocaching day – we had a few that we wanted to take to be able to solve the Church mystery caches, Guteland. Once we got going we picked up a few more.

This is nerd central, where I write my blog and where we check out the geocaches on route. I love having an adapter that can use the car cigarette lighter plug as a power source =)

One of our churches on the tour was Klinte. This one was slightly unusual, and not on the usual places. Another cache took us up to the klint, the cliff, behind the church and the view was spectacular. Not an every day occurance to be in eye level with the bell tower.

Then we drove down towards Gnisvärd and to the beautiful and quaint fishing village there. The fishing village, is no longer used by fishermen but the houses are owned by vacationers in Gotland. I’d love to have one of these cottages, but they are truely small – probably just 1 room, about 10 m2, with no electricity.

In Gnisvärd there is Gotlands only remaining Strandkyrka or Beach Chruch. It’s a pretty little limestone house with a few windows with colored glas – but that’s it – and that’s what makes the church so charming… I wonder if it’s still in use?

In Gnisvärd they also have a couple stone ships to visit. Stone ships are graves from the Iron Age, a burial place for a cheiftain of a village. Usually they are built by 30-some large stones, placed in the shape of a ship. The persons remains are cremaited in a large bonfire and thereafter placed in a house-shaped-vessel in the center of the stone ship or outside the ship under a pile of stones. One of the ones in Gnisvärd is Gotlands second largest ship, with 45 meters from “bow” to “stern”.

We made lunch in Stenkumla, a Swedish speciallity, snabbmakaroner med korv or (quick) macaroni (small pasta that has a boiling time of 3-4 minutes) with sausage. Not the best of foods, but definetly the quickest and tasty =)

Then we stopped of at Träkumla Chruch and it’s a cool church, no?

The next stop was at Västerhejde Church and Andy and agreed that it was the nicest looking church and surrundings of all of Gotlands churches, and now we have actually seen them ALL – all 100-and-some of them =)

Then we went in towards Visby, where we realized that we were 2 caches away from taking our 500th cache – so we had to make sure to take it =) So we kept on caching and managed to grabb our 500th with the mystery cache SVORAK. WEEE! Then we realized that we were a couple of caches away from our previous-total-day-grabbed-cache-record – so we had to make sure to take a few more, just to make sure =) We made quite a few stops in Visby – tick up caches and to do some shopping.

We took a cache at Visby bell tower or possibly Visby water tower – we are unsure of what it actually was. It’s right next to a cemetary but at the same time it’s a really high point – perfect for a water tower. Anyways it wa really pretty.

After stopping by the gas station we started to make our way back east. A night at Sysne would be nice we thought, and even some cured/smoked prawns would be nice for dinner. We stopped at Gervide Iron Age Community, a place where there are historical reminants of farming, living, domestication, cattle. There are two structures remaining to explore.

Then we drove towards Sysne fish shop, in the nick of time, they close at 9 p.m. (during the summer season) and we got there at 8.45 p.m. and bought some prawns and drove around the point and made night. The sky was flaming red and it was a serious warning for sailors =)

Dinner was prawns and after dinner we had some cheese and crackers – a good celebration of out 500 th cache and our newly set 20-day-cache record!

There was a really strong breeze and the sea was geering up for a storm, but we didn’t get much rain – but we were unable to have our windows open because of the strong winds – it’s a nice change from the heat and the mosquitoes though…

Tomorrow is our last day on the island, actually the ferry leaves Gotland at 7.05 a.m. on Monday morning, but that doesn’t really count. Hopefully we’ll have a nice day tomorrow!

Todays caches: Gervide, Brottet, SVORAK (# 500), Solens Berg, Ringmuren 3,  Ringmuren 2, Visby-Gute-Nord, Drillslätten, VIP,  Västerhejde-Gute-Mellan, Trullstainen, Träkumla-Gute-Mellan, The last public execution, XVI, Stenkumla-Gute-Mellan, Tofta-Gute-Mellan, Skeppet # 1, Gnisvärds Strandkyrka, Klinteberget, Klinte-Gute-Mellan

Cache-count: 20/502 caches!