From Gota to Gota via Gota

At the time of the last blog update, we'd just arrived at Lyrestad on the Gota canal - the first "Gota" in this post's title. Lyrestad was typical of many of the Gota canal's guest harbours; pretty but with little around other than the scenery, the moorings, a cafe and a few camper vans. It did have one additional feature though, which was the local history society's rather eccentric museum in a canal side building. This had all sorts of stuff in it, including a motorbike, telephone exchange, perpetual motion machine (which the inventor was convinced would work with just a few more tweaks), cobblers section, toys, tools - you name it! The photos below give a flavour of the place:

Lyrestad local history museum

Telephone exchange - my Auntie Audrey used to work one of these!

Strange fashions modelled by Jo(ish)

From Lyrestad we only had about 5 miles (and 8 locks) to go before Sjotorp and Lake Vanern, which mark the end of the Gota Canal. We spent a couple of nights at Sjotorp before venturing onto the lake.

A bit of a project. I suspect only the owner believes this will ever float again!

Now Lake Vanern is bigger than your average lake. At 87 miles by 47 miles, with an average depth of 27m and a maximum depth of 106m, it's actually more of an inland sea than a lake. It can apparently have quite a nasty chop on occasions and, whilst we were spared that, the weather wasn't exactly kind to us on our 30 mile passage to Lacko Slott. We spotted this yacht en route - motoring with it's full cockpit enclosure in place!

Not intending to sail then!

What a wimp, thought I. That's me pictured below!

Motoring with a cockpit enclosure up? Pah!!

By the time we reached Lacko Slott, we were really rather damp (unlike the "wimp" I suspect) so the cockpit tent went up to give somewhere for the waterproofs to drip. The following day dawned rather brighter, allowing us to appreciate our surroundings for the first time.

Our mooring in Lacko Slott's harbour

Lacko Slott is best known as De la Gardie's castle but its roots ga back to 1298 when the Bishop of Skara laid the foundations for a fortified castle here. It's really rather splendid!

  

Lacko Slott

We took a tour of the place and our guide enjoyed spicing it up a bit. The King's room was where they had their parties (as well as more serious stuff to do with the 30 years' war from 1618 which the pictures commemorate).

According to our guide, they would have copious wine and 30 or 40 courses of food at their banquets. They'd only eat a little of each, of course, and some weren't for eating at all - like the pies which were opened to release live birds that would fly around the room and sing. Apparently they'd also let a few chickens in to run around the room. The guests would chase these with their swords and behead them for their amusement....

Now with all that food and wine there's going to come a time when guests must, er, relieve themselves. Can you spot the toilets in the picture below? Apparently any wall would do, with buckets as necessary. Add that to the fact that people of this era didn't wash and you can understand why they wore a lot of perfume!

The Kings room in Lacko Slott

The next room was where they worked out the peace treaty to end the 30 years' war. With a room full of kings, the seating plan became a bit of an issue. They're all equally important, so who sits at the head of the table (hadn't they heard of King Arthur?!)? Apparently they spent 2 months trying to work out a plan before they gave up and undertook negotiations whilst walking around in circles! Then again, our guide might have been making it all up......

After a couple of nights at Lacko Slott, we set off for Vanersborg (or Trollhattan - depending on progress) and the Trollhatte Canal. This meant negotiating more narrow passages between rocks before reaching open lake water once more.

We've just come through there.

A bit archipelago like

As above!

The weather was kind to us for most of the way but we were greeted by a violent thunderstorm just before Vanersborg:

Here we go again! This is supposed to be summer......

Having made good time, and wanting to give our waterproofs a chance to dry out, we decided to carry on to Trollhattan.

The first bridge, marking the entry to the Trollhatte Canal

The second bridge - a rather nifty lifting railway bridge

The Trollhatte Canal doesn't get the press it deserves. Who's even heard of it? I hadn't until March of this year. The Gota Canal seems to get all the plaudits and I suspect most people think that it's the Gota Canal that stretches from the West coast of Sweden to the East (I did) - but it doesn't!

The Trollhatte Canal links the West coast of Sweden to Lake Vanern and it's an impressive beast. Unlike the Gota Canal, this can take some pretty big ships - up to 89m long! It's 50 miles long and uses just 6 locks (are you paying attention Gota Canal? 6 locks....) to drop you 44m from Lake Vanern to the sea at Gothenburg.

The advantage of having just 6 locks is obviously that you get them over with quickly - particularly as 4 of  them are in Trollhattan (a single and a triple). The disadvantage is that they are rather large...

Waiting for our first lock. Isn't that something in it?

Oh my word! There was

And this was what it looked like inside. Don't fancy the right hand wall!

Having negotiated our first lock without too much drama, it was just a couple more lifting bridges before Trollhattan and our berth for the night. We particularly liked this one:

Another take on a lifting railway bridge. The whole thing slides up and down

Our berth at Spikon, Trollhattan

Unusual view from our berth!

Trollhattan is the location of the falls that were the biggest headache for those planning to create a link between Gothenburg and Lake Vanern. It was to get around these that the locks were required. The first attempt was made in the middle of the 1700s, but these were never completed. A set of 8 locks was completed in 1800 and these were an immediate success. However, more capacity was soon needed and another set of locks was completed in 1844 to be used in parallel with those from 1800. Finally, the current set of just 4 locks was completed in 1916.

The falls (like the locks) are something of a tourist attraction. Normally the water is used to generate electricity at Olidan hydroelectric power station, but at 1500 each day in tourist season, 300,000 litres  of water per second are allowed to take the original route over the falls.

The falls. No water

Here it comes...

... and now from the right....

.... to meet perfectly at the bottom....

... and flow together.....

..... to be joined by one more stream...

... and disappear down river.

The original locks from the 1700s

Second generation locks from the 1800s

And then it was our turn to pass through the 1916 lock staircase:

At the top of a lock...

At the bottom of a lock

Now how do I get this line off?

Looking back at the lock staircase. Hurrah!

Trollhattan has a long standing industrial past because of the power available from the river. It was also the location for the building of Saab cars, so I thought I'd better go and have a look at the museum. Strangely the demographic there was mainly male, with a few bored looking females dotted about. Jo stayed on the boat!

The Saab museum. They used to build aircraft here

A concept car in the museum

...and another

...and another

After Trollhattan it was nearly 50 miles down the Gota Alv (the second "Gota" in this post's title), passing a place called Gota (the third!), before reaching our destination; the GKSS marina in Gothenburg. The pictures below give an indication of the beauty of the scenery en route:

View of the Gota Alv

... and another

.... and another

.... and another

... and another

OK, it wasn't all pretty!

We'd made really good progress down the river until we got close to Gothenburg. After a 20 minute wait for a road bridge to lift we had to wait 50 minutes at this railway bridge. Surely they could have made the trains wait for us? We're British you know!!

50 minutes wait....

And so to Gothenburg. It's not as pretty as Stockholm.

Gothenburg waterfront

Sometimes marinas are described as floating car parks. This is actually a floating car park!

Gothenburg waterfront again

So after about 9 hours, and with the help of a 1.5 kn current in the Gota Alv, we made it to the GKSS marina on the west coast of Sweden. It's nice to see the sea again!

The view from the sea wall that Cyclone is moored to

Yesterday we braved a tram (very efficient actually) and headed for the centre of Gothenburg. I'm probably doing the place a gross injustice, but it really isn't that attractive. No doubt there are plenty of museums and art galleries (yawn...) but we've come to expect more!

Old city hall - the oldest building in Gothenburg dating from 1654

Gustav Adolf

City scene

Street scene

View from Skansen Kronan (a fortress from 1698)

And another

And finally..... Modern art. It's rubbish, isn't it? Clearly there's art for those with talent and there's modern art for those without. Here are some examples for your delectation:

"Art" in Sjotorp. Slabs of rock with water running over them

"Sculpture" in Trollhattan. Rubbish.

Sculpture in Gothenburg. And what exactly are these supposed to be?

Man with brick superglued to foot. Gothenburg

Rabbit in Trollhattan. Why? (Actually I liked that. At least you can see what it is)

And oh, I nearly forgot! A museum in Gothenburg to whet the palette of our good friend Philippa - a lifelong Volvo enthusiast I seem to recall!

All Philippa's Christmases at once!

Tomorrow we head out to sea. We're not sure exactly where as I've yet to do my planning. It'll all depend on the wind anyway. 

If you've got this far, thanks for reading!