Ängelholm hadn’t been my first choice when choosing a stop on our Swedish fly-drive. I’d rather fancied staying in Båstad, the tennis capital of Sweden, where the Open is played in early July. Truth be told, it wasn’t the tennis that attracted me; more the endless fun I could have, if people had asked me where we were going on holiday, to shout ‘Båstad!” in a demented Father Jack bark. It’s actually pronounced ‘bow-sta’ but why spoil a good wheeze. Both Båstad and Ängelholm are towns in the very north of the ancient province of Skåne, which I have now discovered is pronounced “Scone”. This didn’t help me much as I’m very much a ‘scone rhymed with John’ rather than a ‘scone rhymed with own’ kind of girl. Apparently it’s the posh scone/own you use to pronounce Skåne.
Have I lost you?
Båstad was pretty much booked up because of a tennis tournament, so Ängelholm was my next choice; and what a good choice it was with the adorable Klitterhus hotel which more than made up for the fact that I couldn’t shout Båstad at everyone.
Our sightseeing day in Ängelholm started quite well. As seems to be our habit, we had taken a boat tour from the marina, along the Rönne River, to the main town. The town was pretty, arranged rather like the hub of a bicycle wheel with several bridges leading to it. We had coffee and bagels and then, woman on a mission, I became fixated on finding the clay cuckoos for which the town is supposedly famous for making. Now I don’t know about you but I was looking for something that resembled a bird. I searched in many shops looking for this creature, hoping it would make a good souvenir. I should really have asked someone but the Burgess trait of not seeking help seemed to have seeped into my psyche by some sort of touristy osmosis. Since our return to the UK I have googled the famous clay cuckoo and discovered it looks like this:
It is a little musical instrument that you blow into. Not something you’d possibly find inside a clock then?
However we did find some chocolate which cheered us all up:
As we sat in the boat on the return journey, the boys had a Plopp and I discovered a little gem in a tourist leaflet about the town….
On May 18, 1948, a Swedish entrepreneur, Gösta Carlsson, claimed he had seen a UFO land in the forest clearing at Kronoskogen, a suburb of Ängelhom. Whether he did or not has obviously never been proven, although it would seem the area had witnessed ‘large-scale test flights’ over the years. Nevertheless, in 1963 a memorial was constructed on the spot where the supposed landing had taken place. The memorial consists of a concrete model of the UFO plus the landing traces.
“I must see this before we leave,” I said, “it’s not far from the hotel, just a few minutes drive.”
‘Must we?” muttered both boys in unison, showing a complete lack of enthusiasm and interest in this very rare attraction.
“Yes, we must! I’ll navigate.”
It was starting to rain at this point and the sky was becoming ominously dark, but Dougie and Rory were given no choice in the matter: we were going to see the memorial. It seemed an easy route on my map but the road we took didn’t look quite right. This was because we were driving on a cycle path. Dougie’s rather dubious solution was to put his foot down so we could get to the end of it quicker. We eventually ended up in a car park of sorts in the forest. It was wet, muddy, we weren’t dressed for the occasion, and we weren’t entirely sure how far into the forest the memorial was. As we ventured forth on foot, the mozzies started to attack my ripe husband, our son began to moan and whine in spectacular fashion….and then an enormous crack of thunder boomed overhead. We went no further.
As we tramped back to the car, some two minutes after getting out of it, I figured that if the little green men had managed to travel millions of miles to reach a forest clearing on the west coast of Sweden, then how come we had given up so easily.
And I bet they didn’t use the cycle path.
I could do with a good plopp right now…
Me too!
I love Plopp, always picked up a bar or two on our break for the border shopping trips! Hope you bought plenty of plopp home!?! 🙂
Glad you're a Plopp fan. No room in the case for any souvenir Plopp.
How can anyone eat something called Plopp?
Easy. Just pop it in your mouth.
That reminds me of the joke – if you've got one small green ball in one hand and another small green ball in the other hand, what have you got?
Answer – the undivided attention of an Alien. (could also be a leprechaun but doesn't really fit in with the theme of your blog posting).
If only we'd gone a bit further I could have tried that out.
Probably just as well the weather forced you to turn back – I've always found forests slightly forbidding and you might just have met some little green men….
It was a pretty poor show on our part, particularly as there was a special path leading to the clearing- we didn't have to cut swathes of branches or anything. But the thunder was the last straw.
How very intrepid you are…..forests and rain and ufo sights…..great stuff.
We like to think we are a bit of a Bear Grylls family but we are such a poor copy.
Not that I am one to blow my own trumpet, and not trying too hard in an attempt to avoid double entendres, but I suspect I was more right than I imagined, that you may have procured your Plopp at a cheap hotel chain at the rear of your hotel.
On the not finding a UFO site due to driving up a cycle path, inappropriate clothing and a thumderstorm, methinks a (probably) grassy patch of land with a few potholes probably is not going to keep the male side of the family thinking it was not a good call to go back.
So you think I got Plopp from Ann Hus? That's pretty good, I have to say! Haha!
But there was a little concrete model of the UFO I wanted to see – it was saucer shaped and everything!
I meant 'sites' of course………and how do you feel about possible ufo sightings? open mind or not?
I'm a bit sceptical, to be honest, but I was curious all the same.
Not seeing the UFO site was probably the right choice. Now it will live forever in your imagination, possibly growing in detail every year.
Unfortunately, TSB, that lovely idea of yours has been scuppered by the fact that I have googled it and seen a photo on Wikipedia. If you click on the word 'memorial' in the post you can see it too.
Heaven, I HAVE Bastad missed you – I adore Sweden, wish I could live there, also lots of what they say "Am gan yem" etc sounds just like Geordie, so I reckon I'd be fine buggering off home to eat Plopp all the time. xx
So good to have you back blogging and commenting again, ELS!
Totally agree about the language – a touch of Geordie and a smidgen of Scots. Words like sjukhus for hospital, so much easier when you see it as sick house! Even watching the Olympics wasn't too bad with words like langdhopp for long jump.
I am just now surfacing from 3 1/2 weeks of violent back-to-school (mine, not my boys) mania and discovering that all this hilarity has been sitting, unread, in my Reader. It would have done me so much good last week when I was tearing my hair out about curriculum and schedules and exactly how to go about maintaining discipline and create learning in a classroom full of very small people who – in my opinion – are all in need of some warm milk and a good long nap.
I'm sorry you missed the actual alien site, but if you're really passionate about them, you can always plan a trip to Roswell, NM. We went a few years ago and – although we're not believers – absolutely loved it.
I think my son could have done with you teaching him last week. Back to school after a long summer of lie-ins, he could have done with some warm milk and a nap!
I'm not that fascinated in alien things but when you see something like this mentioned in a book, and it seems so out of the ordinary, I'm a bit curious. Now Roswell would interest me too.