See-sawing on the sea in Sweden

13/04/06

I’M sitting on a plane on my way back from Sweden and the European launch of the Volvo S80 – a big group, varying from such grandees as the Telegraph, Top Gear and Sun hacks to little freelances such as myself.

With my career having bounced around a bit over the years, with spells in motor sport, newspapers, classic cars and the like, I haven’t been doing this long enough to have seen it all before – though I’ve been in the new car market for almost 10 years now. So while for some of my more jaded colleagues this has been a journey to a familiar environment, I still enjoy firsts – my first flight out of the somewhat cute little London City Airport, my first flight into Copenhagen, and my first time in either Denmark or Sweden, though the Danish experience was but a fleeting glimpse en route to and from the impressive bridge spanning the sea between the two Scandinavian nations.

Leaving aside the fact that I never met my favourite Muppets character (I once reduced the Editor of Classics to tears of laughter with a sudden unsolicited Swedish Chef impression) I have to say Sweden did not ‘float my boat’ even though boats formed the best part of the trip, as I’ll tell momentarily. Okay the weather remained dreary and grey for the duration of our trip, the sun naturally deciding to finally break out as we got on the plane to come home and long after I’d struggled to get pictures of the car, but the place seemed dreary and grey too, with uninspiring, flat scenery and lines of boring almost tin shack-like houses. No doubt I’m being unkind, and I’ve missed out on some glorious vista to be enjoyed at another date – we shall see… The food was okay, if not exciting, but the coffee very poor; I subscribe to Top Gear hack Paul Horrell’s view; “Want a cup of coffee in Sweden? Get on a plane and fly to Italy…”

I was paired up with a guy I’d not met before, from Automobile Engineer, who proved to have a rather droll sense of humour, resulting in an enjoyable drive as we both attempted, very badly, to pronounce Swedish place names, the only one we didn’t struggle with being the stunningly-titled Bastad, where we stayed in a hotel apparently attached to the home of Swedish tennis. It is also a seaside venue,  and the definite highlight of the trip was a high speed evening ride on a 600bhp rigid inflatable boat. I had misgivings, especially when they dressed me up like something out of a BBC sea rescue drama, but it was seriously impressive holding on grimly as our driver carved incredibly sharp banking turns bouncing over the wake of the second boat. Memorable…

The car? Okay, though I found the diesel surprisingly harsh in tone – felt like it needed a Strepsil. This was also the first time I really had to think about pictures (which is probably why it rained so hard) as I learnt today that Alvey & Towers photo library were impressed with my first sample submission and are signing me up. Henceforth it will be sets of pictures needed from every launch and test car – more pressure, but good news at the end of a trying week that saw the end of my short involvement with InCarNation magazine – very annoying but perhaps predictable in hindsight…

The seatbelt sign is on, got to finish up, and start hoping that the man from DaimlerChrysler has found his way to the airport, to swap my Smart ForTwo for a Mercedes B-Class, ready for a weekend of Easter family commitments. Deep joy!