I’d never been to Scandinavia, until last summer that is, when we spent two wonderful weeks in a rustic, weather-boarded, retro-style, summerhouse set amidst lakes and forest, just a little to the East of Gothenburg.

Although plenty of doomsayers warned us about the summer plagues of mosquitos which we would surely encounter (and which would, without a doubt, ruin our whole trip), I don’t think we saw a single one of the pesky blighters during the whole of our time there – Instead, just a charming landscape dotted with a myriad of lakes, endless forests and wild, rocky coastlines; all liberally scattered with an eclectic mix of neat, cheerily-painted wooden cabins and dispersed farm steadings. The Swedish holidays had finished and we had the place pretty much all to ourselves; some locals even expressed surprise at encountering holidaying visitors from warmer parts of Europe there at all.

So if you like canoeing, or jumping into a lake each morning, quiet fishing villages and wild coastlines; or perhaps just simply watching an osprey pluck a fish from the mirror-like stillness of calm, evening water, then Sweden is the place for you.  And as for the mosquitos: why that’s just a tall story some bunch of locals made up to keep the place all for themselves – well maybe that’s true…