A whistle stop tour of the last 2 weeks - Ystad, Utklippan, Gronhogen, Kalmar and Byxelkrok

We've made quite a bit of progress in the last couple of weeks and are now only about 125 Nm from Stockholm.

When we left Copenhagen on 4th June, we sailed 57 miles - including the Falsterbo Canal shortcut (this must be the shortest canal in the world, surely?) - to Ystad, which is on the southern coast of Sweden.

Falsterbo Canal Bridge

There are 3 things that are noteworthy about Ystad.

The first is that the male harbourmaster is very grumpy (the female one could not have been more charming)! Several of us had tried unsuccessfully on arrival to pay our harbour dues at a machine which also issues you with a card that gives access to electricity and showers (the harbour office had closed at 1600). So when I spoke to the harbourmaster the following morning I'd expected some sort of apology for the fact that showers etc. were unavailable, but he simply denied that anyone else had had a problem.!Hmmm....

The second is that Ystad is a really attractive town once you leave the harbour area itself - see pics below:

Ystad theatre

A street near the centre of Ystad

The area of the Ystad Monastery, in the centre of town

A herb garden in the monastery area

The duck pond behind the monastery

And yet another Ystad town centre view

The third doesn't apply just to Ystad, but to the whole of Sweden. I never knew this, but apparently they've been celebrating my birthday - 6th June - with a National holiday for ages! In Ystad there were many stalls and plenty of free entertainment laid on, including such delights as an accordion band and line dancers!

Ystad National Day Celebrations

Accordion band

Line dancers

 The final hurrah was the release of quite a few balloons, as the picture below shows:

Er.... balloons

Still wanting to get some miles behind us, we set off on 7th June for Utklippan - a distance of some 80 miles. It was a long day (0500 start...) and an uncomfortable sail with a F6 behind us and a rolling sea that forced us to steer by hand the whole way. Still, we made good progress and completed the trip in 13.5 hours.

Utklippan is something special. I've tried to give an idea of the place in the pictures below, but you get a better idea if you look on Google Earth. It's basically a load of rocks - two of which are big enough to be called islands - on which sits a lighthouse and a half dozen buildings. The harbour that yachts can use was originally created for the use of the tender serving the lighthouse. The facilities are a shed with a large bucket on which sits a toilet seat! It's a nature reserve so you can only access very small parts of it in the bird breeding season - you can maybe walk about 100 metres!

The approach to Utklippan

Utklippan

The harbour. The facilities are in the yellow shed by Cyclone in the distance!

Birds live in the tyres on the harbour walls. Noisy little blighters!

We'd intended to stay a couple of nights in Utklippan to recharge our batteries, but the wind was due to change to an unfavourable direction and so we took a tip from Marjolein and Alfred, a charming dutch couple we'd met in Scheveningen and who we bumped into again in Utklippen, and headed for Gronhogen on the island of Oland.

Oland is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a designation given because of the way that the landscape has been formed and changed by mankind over millenia. The agricultural landscape; alvar and coastal land; linear villages; forts, burial grounds and churches; and unique plants birds and insects are what make it special. It's also very sparsely populated, so riding our bikes 2 abreast on the roads was a pleasure.

A standing stone and a wally with his trousers tucked into his socks

Our trusty steeds for our 25km excursion

Now our bikes may look a little small - in fact the sight of me cycling past in Portland has been known to move Chinese girls to fits of spontaneous laughter - but they're the biggest that will fit easily into our cockpit locker. And there is a serious side to the trousers being tucked into socks too. It's actually a tic defence, as these nasty little critters carry some very unpleasant diseases in this part of the world.

The track to Lange Jan Lighthouse - rather like the New Forest, we thought

Lange Jan Lighthouse

From Lange Jan lighthouse on the southern tip of the island, you can see massive seals sunning themselves on the rocks. No pictures I'm afraid, as you needed binoculars to spot them!

More standing stones. There are loads of them!

There are a lot of these too. This one had graffiti dated 1878

Eketorps borg was an interesting find. They are recreating it with sections within the walls from different eras of its history. The walls themselves are dry stone.

Eketorps borg

Inside the fort

More from inside

And more from inside

And more from inside!

Finally from Gronhogen, the picture below shows the view from our boat. Not bad, eh? We spent a very enjoyable evening on board with Alfred and Marjolein (who I mentioned earlier). When they left, it was actually starting to get a little light in the sky - at 0100! Maybe it never got completely dark? It is light enough to see perfectly well by 0300 here (that's 0200 in England) which we find amazing.

The view from Cyclone in Gronhogen

Finally finally from Gronhogen, I must mention Lennart! Lennart introduced himself to us when walking his dog past our boat. We invited him to join us for a drink the following evening and he spent quite a long time with us, suggesting places that we should visit as we headed north. The following day he came back and invited us to go with him for a hospital check-up. That might sound a little strange but his plan was to drive us half the length of Oland and drop us in a town while he was seeing the doctor. He'd then take us for a scenic drive around the southern parts of the island, pointing out the different birds and sites of interest. A really charming man who we were lucky to meet.

Turning down the offer of a free night's berthing in Gronhogen (buy 3, get 1 free) we set off for Kalmar on 11th June. Here we met 2 new (to us) methods of berthing, The first was the boom moorings pictured below - so called because of the noise your bow makes when it clouts the pontoon whilst you're trying to work out how to get your stern line through the tiny ring at the end of the boom itself (OK, maybe that's not why they're called that)! The second was the stern buoy and pontoon combination which you'll see better in the later photos from Byxelkrok.

Boom moorings. They look like pontoons but aren't designed to be stood on. 

Friday was school graduation day in Kalmar. This is traditionally celebrated by the students hiring lorries - which have very loud horns and music systems - in which they dance around whilst getting drunk and driving around in circles!

School graduation day - Swedish style!

Kalmar has a long history and a very impressive castle. Forgive me if I don't go into any detail (my fingers are getting tired!) but the border between Denmark and Sweden has changed a lot over time and Kalmar was once a border town - hence its castle and walled nature.

Kalmar Castle

The Queen's reception room. No chairs for guests, as if you weren't Royal you stood!

Now according to our guide, the Royals used to like a drink or two and also a little entertainment at mealtimes. Apparently some privileged people were allowed to stand and watch these meals on occasions. One such visitor documented the food on offer and what went on. The table below reflects what he wrote. What it doesn't show are the leeches that were placed in eggshells floating on water and which would try to get to the water making the eggs move in the process. It also can't demonstrate the small animals, including birds, that were drugged and put into the pies. They would wake when the drugs wore off and then escape to run and fly around the room. Hilarious, apparently!

A typical banquet

A street in Kalmar's old town

A sign to amuse those of a juvenile disposition!

We attempted our first stern buoy / pontoon mooring in Kalmar in a bid to escape from the very noisy large motorboat that was moored near to us. It wasn't pretty as the new £70 tool I'd bought to secure the buoy wasn't big enough to fit over its metal loop. Fortunately we had help from the shore and we got secured without too much fuss. I even managed to retrieve the fender that had been pulled off in the process! The help was provided by Nicholas, a CA member who had introduced us to 2 other CA members with whom we'd had drinks earlier (Janet and Simon), and the owner of the adjacent boat - Conquest. We got chatting to Conquest's owner and suggested he might like to visit Byxelkrok at the north of Oland, which was to be our next stop. We're glad he did as we shared a very enjoyable evening together on our boat when he arrived. I appear to be getting sociable in my old age!

Byxelkrok harbour. It was much more full when we arrived...

And again

Cyclone on a stern buoy mooring - note the unforgiving concrete "pontoon"

Our next stop is Visby on Gotland (about 45 Nm) after which we'll make the final leap to the Stockholm archipelago. It's starting to look like we're actually going to make it!