We crossed the Öresund bridge between Copenhagen and Malmo into Sweden. It’s spectacular, spanning 16 kilometres. Tim always had it in his head to drive these bridges. Once I got over the feeling of being suspended over water, I was in awe of the magnificent engineering.

Sweden was a revelation as we drove alongside huge fields of barley, wheat and oats. These came right to the roadside. Every so often fields of oil seed rape, beans and maize cropped up. Here and there, white bales of silage interrupted the waving corn.

Each farmhouse and building acted like an oasis, far apart, painted in a wine colour, often with white window frames and generally surrounded with mature trees. We saw very few cattle. When we did, they were mainly beef animals on poor quality grass.

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Gothenburg was our base. It’s a flat city with an intricate network of trams and buses, and like Denmark, bicycle lanes and footpaths alongside them. It’s packed with shops and restaurants and is a lovely city to walk about, crossing the bridges and exploring the beautiful King’s Garden. The city runs along the Central Canal and covers 32.5 acres. We did the canal boat trip on a sunny day. It was pleasant, but not at as spectacular as Copenhagen with its low bridges.

Each farmhouse and building acted like an oasis, far apart, painted in a wine colour, often with white window frames and generally surrounded with mature trees

We left Gothenburg and the motorways and travelled south to get a feel for the farming countryside. Sweden is dotted with open farms that are very sophisticated. Where we’ve ditches, they have dykes. It can be a bit disconcerting. We stopped at Sonja’s Veranda, a lovely old world café/restaurant with a quirky little gift shop attached, in a little village called Tvååker, near Varberg. It was very popular with the locals with a steady queue. We had coffee and cake. The place was crawling with wasps. The Swedes took no notice.

Gotland sheep

Our next stop was Öströö sheep farm. Here, the fields were slightly hilly. The Gotland sheep of various hues of silvery grey grazed happily in multi-species fields.

As we drove along, Tim described the multi-species as containing various plantains, a lot of white clover with some red clover, Timothy grass, a little Cocksfoot grass, a small amount of rye grass and one he didn’t recognise.

“How can you tell all that from the car,” I asked, genuinely impressed. The answer: “it’s my job.” We pulled in and examined it. Apparently, sheep do very well on mixed species and it was evident on this farm. These open farms really optimise what they’ve got. A sheep safari ran around the farm with a tractor and people trailers attached. They had a huge shop with everything you could possibly do with wool inside from Santa’s beard to bedroom slippers. Walking among the wine-coloured sheds and looking beyond into the no-go areas, Tim spotted a Keenan feeder backed into a corner.

Sheep and lambs could be petted and of course, there was a café with picnic benches nestled amongst the trees. Lots of farms sell milk, cheese or yogurt in a self-service way.

On our return journey, we stopped to admire a group of 25 heifers, mainly Swedish Reds and some Holsteins. Another day, we drove north and saw some dairy cows grazing. We stopped at Vanersborg. We strolled along the side of lake Vänern, the largest lake in Sweden. It has 22,000 islands, populated with birds.

Sweden was lovely. Swedes can switch between Swedish and English effortlessly. It is so impressive. The harvest is just getting going and yet, we felt every crop was well ripe. It was startling how difficult it was to find milk. We did see Tullamore Dew and heard U2’s music, a little touch of Ireland. We had a lovely trip.