Goodbye Visitors - Hello Livia and Roger


We drove Caroline and Grace down to Sundsvall and waved them off as they took the train down to Stockholm airport.
That left us in Sundsvall so we phoned Livia and Roger and after a bit of chat dropped round for a coffee. Once we were there Roger suggested we drive together to visit the area outside the city where he grew up. It was a wild area of forest and lakes with some big nature reserves, but also some old and full-grown oak trees. That would be no big deal in Britain but here it is very unusual. These particular trees were planted well over a hundred years ago by a factory owner, close to his house in the country!

The actual blip is of a very clear-running stream and if you look carefully you'll see some freshwater pearl mussels, their shells slightly open as they filter the water for their food.  These mussels used to be very widespread in Sweden but have mostly died out, and are now a protected species. If the stream they live in is disturbed, for example by forestry activity, the extra sediment chokes the mussels, especially the smaller and younger ones. Some of these were over a hundred years old but more importantly there were also tiny, young, mussels, showing this colony is thriving.

I've heard of these mussels and know how rare they are these days, but this is the first time I've seen them. Strange how exciting a drab grey mussel can be!  Many thanks to Roger for showing them to us.