Mushroom pickers can be a little conflicted about the benefits of a long, hot, dry summer. We like to laze in the sun or head for the beach like anyone else but the fact is that without a healthy dose of rain now and again the wild mushrooms just don’t start fruiting. Where we are on the West Coast of Sweden there’s barely anything to pick and that’s because the rain that has fallen has just not been sufficient. Luckily there was a real downpour a little further north and inland, so Bengt made a very scientific study of the Swedish meteorological office’s (SMHI) data and reports from other mushroom pickers to see where might be the best place to head to and we headed off on a wild mushroom road trip.

Luckily for us the 400 km we drove there and back paid off. A little forest road in the vicinity of Lake Vättern, Sweden’s second largest lake was our first proper stop and the first thing we spotted under the fir trees was a beautiful group of absolutely perfect porcini, or Karl Johan as they are called here.Altogether we picked around 15 – 20 porcini at that first spot but the next stop was even more successful. We picked around 3 kilos and they were some of the largest and most perfect porcini we have ever seen. Naturally we took photos of ourselves, like proud fishermen, with our prize finds!

After that we wearily headed home and it took us an hour after we got back to slice the mushrooms and get them on the drying racks. A long day, but worth it to finally be able to get our hands on one of the kings of the forest, the delicious porcini.

We’ve been ‘home’ in West Sweden for a week now, and because it’s been a long, hot dry summer there’s a dearth of wild mushrooms. Like all the other fungus fanatics in Sweden we’ve been keeping an eye on the reports ready to leap in the car and head off to the woods somewhere to harvest the first of the Porcini or Chanterelles. A trip further north to Dalsland turned up lovely lingon berries but no mushrooms.  However it’s been an unsettled week and thunderstorms and torrential rain have got everybody’s hopes up. A warm summer, followed by a good long soaking – could this year be THE bumper year when we could be picking tens of kilos of Karl Johan (the Swedish for Penny Bun or Porcini) instead of just kilos? We’ve yet to find out but we’ll keep you posted. In the meantime a little recce in the woods yesterday turned up two lovely Orange Birch Bolete (Leccinum Versipelle) which will go in our Forest Mix, and a picture perfect Chanterelle. Ceps can come up more or less overnight but chanterelles take a little longer to grow, so the plan is to keep checking our favourite picking spots till it all comes together. Not long now….

This Saturday we leave the UK to spend a month on ‘our’ beautiful island of Orust, holidaying, catching up with family and doing lots of mushroom picking. We can’t wait! Not surprisingly, we get asked about Sweden a lot. Which is great, because we love to talk about it, especially West Sweden where Get Funghi is based when we’re over there. It seems a lot of people have preconceptions about Sweden, most of them erroneous, so to set the record a bit straighter here are my top five reasons why I love the area so much:

The sea.

The west coast in particular is a stunningly beautiful archipelago of a myriad of small rocky islands and some larger ones. It might surprise you to know that in a good summer the sea temperature can be a very pleasant 20 degrees and it’s the prefect coast for swimming, kayaking or canoeing, with generally still and peaceful waters. Island hopping is easy because the larger ones are reached by free car ferries and there are boats of all sizes to hire or charter.

The landscape

The Swedes love the outdoor life. There are only 9 million of them in the whole country so you won’t bump into many others if you venture out in the extensive, unspoilt forests full of wild mushrooms. The natural flora is a pretty mixture of birch, fir and pines and bilberry and lingonberry bushes, interspersed with thousands of beautiful lakes and pretty traditional wooden houses set in open, gently rolling farmland. Wild flowers abound and you will be unlucky not to spot wild deer – and lucky if you catch sight of an elk! Idyllic is the word that springs to mind.

The weather

This is one of the subjects that we get asked about most. “Isn’t it cold all year round in Sweden?” is a frequent question. Given that the length of the country is 2000 km from top to bottom it’s clearly not a place to generalise about the weather. But in west Sweden for instance it might surprise you to hear that summers can be very warm, over 30 degrees sometimes. Generally the climate is milder than many other countries lying as far north because it is influenced by the Gulf Stream, so it is very pleasant, with an average of 9 hours of sunlight in July. And as just 86mm of rain falls during an average of 14 days it can be a fantastic place for a summer holiday. Warmer than Scotland and without the midges! We love going all year round. As the Swedes (and the Norwegians, Finns and Danes apparently..) love to say, there’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing.

The food

Sweden is getting a reputation for it’s fine modern cuisine and is starting to promote food tourism. On the west coast you’d be mad not to try the seafood, which is always the first thing we stock up on when we arrive. Cold water prawns, crayfish, local mussels, all kinds of fish – always fresh and absolutely delicious. Of course eating out can be pricey but if you self cater like we do you can eat like kings as the supermarkets are incredibly well stocked with a huge range of very high quality local and international ingredients. Wines and beers in the Systembolag (off licences) are generally no pricier than in the UK although spirits are.

The culture

One of our favourite activities when we’re over there is visiting one of the many art galleries on the islands, mainland or in Gothenburg, the capital of the west coast. Our neighbouring island of Tjörn hosts the internationally renowned Nordic Watercolour Museum and the giant sculpture park of Pilane, and we love the maritime theme and the wonderful exhibitions (and the cafe!) at Bohusläns Museum in Uddevalla (see picture below). In Gothenburg the Konstmuseet has a fantastic collection of work by Nordic artists, and if you like design we can recommend the Röhsska Museum, always right on trend with its exhibitions and galleries.