Lake Roxen

is one of the beautiful attractions in the Swedish town of Linkoping, and since I’d borrowed a small folding bike, and I decided to cycle down (we'd walked to the lake previously.)

The weather was very unusually warm even for Swedish summer, but I manfully (womanfully?) pedalled my two tiny wheels, and we started with this beautiful rainbow (though I couldn’t see any rain clouds!)

We cycled through brown grass and green:

We came to the place where the road to the lake branched off from the highway:

A fleecy dolphin floated overhead:

We explored a place where there was massive earth-moving and construction going on; Barn Swallows were swooping around, taking mud for their nests. Here's my cycle, and the earthmover! Wildflowers bloomed everywhere: this is wild dill: Taking a rough path instead of the road, we found it very enjoyable: A COMMON TORTOISESHELL sat with its wings closed: So did another butterfly: There were several EUROPEAN GREENFINCHES around, feeding on the berries: A COMMON KESTREL delighted me, high overhead: Roly-poly, curly-woolly sheep grazed on the farmland: Horses rubbed against each other, companionably: the golden wheat was nearly ready for harvesting: I could spot the lake: We rode up to the water: A beautifully-flowering acquatic plant welcomed us. As did a sitting ARCTIC TERN and several ducks: The houses on the lake were picture-perfect: The sun in the trees and the reeds was beautiful. I was thrilled to spot a MUTE SWAN The swan moved in front of the resting GULLS: It was quite far away, but my zoom came in handy: then I sawa whole family, with parents and three cygnets:

This Swan family was one of the highlights, indeed, of my visit to Scandinavia.

Then came the sight of this

GREAT CRESTED GREBE

that I have seen before only in the lap of the Himalaya!

We discovered even more when we came back to the area the next day…but that’s the next post!