6-10 July: Oskarshamn and Öland

Oskarshamn turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant little town although we had only gone there to shelter from the gale.  It wasn’t really a tourist resort, but felt like a pleasant place to live and was reasonably bustling (compared to many small Swedish towns we’ve visited) as a busy commercial and ferry port.

The weather was sunny with blue skies, but it was actually much windier than it looks – all the flags in this picture are streaming out and the clouds scudding past – we’re glad we’re safe in harbour and not out at sea!

We watched the Gotland ferry carefully reverse into its berth in a strong and very gusty wind – you can see the gusts as darker patches on the water’s surface …

We walked through the pleasant little town of Oskarshamn, stopping at the church …

… to admire its wooden painted interior, which is quite elaborate with gilded decoration on the altar …

… a very grand pulpit …

… and bible scenes painted along the length of the roof …

This is Lilla Torget, the small square in Oskarshamn, which has an old hand-operated water pump and fountain …

This is the old part of the town, with the original cobbled street lined with small wooden houses …

One of them runs a delightful little café in the garden during the summer months …

We had a lovely lunch, but you can see how windy it is from the state of the sun umbrella – and the table cloths had weights hanging from them to keep them down!

The following day started off flat calm – this is virtually the same picture as the first one above, but the flags are now all hanging limply and the reflections in the water show how still it is …

This traditional wooden boat moored just in front of us with rope rigging, wooden blocks and pulleys and no electric winches – it looks like hard work!

The weather was good enough to make the short trip across the Kalmar Sound to Borgholm, the main town on the island of Öland.  However, it is deceptively sheltered here in Oskarshamn harbour, and by the time we left the wind had got up quite a bit and it had started to rain! …

But at least we could sail, and then the sun came out again …

It became pretty breezy, with gusts up to gale force 8, and there was quite a choppy sea …

Arriving in Borgholm, the main town on the island of Öland, we were passed by this blur of spray – the inshore lifeboat dashing to someone’s aid …

This is Borgholm’s main town square – quite a buzzing summer holiday atmosphere with free open air concerts at various venues around the town …

Our first walk into the town centre found the square full of classic cars – in particular American ones – attending some sort of rally …

We were happy to be in a safe harbour, tied up to one of these stern buoys, but there’s quite a lot of swell coming in and the wind howled all night, although you can’t really see how windy it is in the picture.  We’ve had less rough conditions crossing the English Channel!

Interesting light in the sky just before sunset …

The following morning it was still blowing ‘old boots’ (as they say!) and no sign of it relenting for a couple of days.  However, it wasn’t actually raining, so it was nice enough castle-visiting weather!

Before we left the marina, we moved to a brand new jetty – only opened today – further into the harbour and therefore more sheltered and much more comfortable …

We set off for Borgholm Slott on foot, passing some very attractive substantial wooden houses with pretty balconies and some lovely decorative features …

Then right in the middle of them – this concrete box!  It seems so plain and out of place – I wonder what the planners were thinking?!

We walked up a steep footpath towards the castle – at the top was this, The Hunt Stone, erected in memory of King Karl XV in 1873.  Inside the cairn is a copper cylinder containing a parchment and three coins from the time of his reign.  King Karl instituted three hunts on Öland and the monument was erected by his hunting club in recognition of this.  A bit of a random reason for a memorial perhaps!

This was our first sight of Borgholm Slott.  It dates from the 12^th century when a round defence tower was built on the edge of the cliff …

Inside there are some great passages and underground cellars – fun for the children who were visiting …

Later they built a massive defensive wall round the castle – about 3 metres thick – with great bastions 10 metres high.  You can see the scale of the place from size of the people in the photo…

In the 16^th century Borgholm was transformed into a Renaissance castle, and in the 17^th it became a Baroque palace.  Unfortunately in the 19^th century there was a fire and only the ruins now remain.

Nowadays you can have your wedding among the ruins overlooking the sea …

This is a view of the whole castle seen from the plains that it defends …

From there we could walk to Sollidens Slott, the Royal family’s Summer Palace – they still use it so only the garden is open to the public.  The Summer Palace was completed in 1906 for Sweden’s Queen Victoria and is dramatically white – designed apparently to reflect her love for Capri as well as incorporating Swedish design …

This is the little princesses’ play house – made to look like a crofter’s cottage with a grass roof …

There are various gardens in different styles – this is the formal Italian Garden …

… the Dutch Rose Garden …

… the Rock Garden – with proper Swedish-size rocks …

… including in the lawn!

… and lovely colourful borders in the English Park …

There was also a competition (like a very mini Chelsea Flower Show) to design a Royal garden and visitors could vote for their favourite.  These are the four entries – I wonder which won?

The next day was grey, cold and very windy – we saw 39 knots on our anemometer!  That’s Force 8!  Glad we’re not going anywhere by sea today!  But apart from a few spatters of rain, the day remained dry for our exploration of Öland by hire car.

First stop was the little harbour of Sandvik, a delightful place on a sunny day I’m sure – but we were glad we hadn’t chosen to come here with the boat. The harbour entrance looked decidedly rough and, even inside the harbour, the boats were rolling around all over the place …

We moved on to Källa (pronounced ‘shayla’), looking for the ‘old’ church, but first we found the ‘new’ church, its 19^th century replacement …

Actually very attractive, stone-built but all wooden inside, with a wall-painting behind the altar where an English church would have a stained glass window …

Then on to Källa Old Church, which is ‘the best preserved disused church in Öland’ – some claim to fame!

It is certainly very old, dating from the 1100s, but still sometimes used for weddings, and you can see where various alterations and additions have been made over the centuries …

Outside in the churchyard is the separate wooden belltower with its single bell …

Then down to Källa harbour.  In the Middle Ages, Källa was a much bigger place and a very important port, a centre for Baltic Sea trade.  It was first and foremost known for shipping limestone, but they had to invent an ingenious way of loading the stone onto the cargo sailing ships as the harbour was too shallow for them to enter.  Instead the stone was transported on ox-carts as far out as the oxen could paddle!  The stone was then lifted onto barges and rowed or punted out to the sailing ships.

Today Källa has a few holiday cottages to rent and a sort of pop-up sauna in a little van, but the jetty looked rather rotten – we were careful where we trod!

We followed a sign advertising waffles, and found a very welcoming little café in an old cow-shed in someone’s back garden!  They were rather surprised to get any customers on a day like this, but gave us blankets, delicious waffles and unlimited coffee – you can see how wrapped up we are!

Next stop was a nature reserve on the west coast, where we could see abundant wildflowers and the perfectly round island of Blå Jungfrun (the Blue Maiden) in the distance …

… and the famous Byrums ‘raukar’– limestone sea stacks, formed by the action of the sea eroding the softer rocks surrounding them.  They are certainly very curious and worth seeing, but these are not as big or impressive as the ones we saw on Gotland last year …

The northern part of the island seems to be a mixture of fertile farmland and quite barren countryside with random rocks scattered across the fields.  There are loads of beautiful wildflowers along the edges of the roads and crumbling dry-stone walls – this picture shows how windy it was too!

We then set off to explore the southern end of the island.  We stopped for lunch at a former farm which has been opened as a museum depicting farming life in the 19^th century.  This is the old pump to raise water from the well …

… a horse-driven threshing and milling machine …

… and the inside of a crofter’s cottage …

The farmhouse has been left just as it was when the last farmer and his family moved out in the 1950s – quite smart and comfortable in the main living rooms …

… but cooking was still done on an old-fashioned open range …

Finally we reached our intended destination in the southern part of the island – the Alvar.  Öland’s ‘Stora Alvar’ consists of 300 square kilometres of steppe-like heath.  The moorland has developed on a plateau of hard limestone bedrock with a very thin covering of soil.  Here you can see some of the typical many-sided limestone slabs …

Opinions about Öland’s Stora Alvar have varied – the Swedish botanist, Carl Linnaeus, did not like what he saw when he looked out over the wasteland in the summer of 1741.  The great layer of limestone 40 km long and up to 10 km wide covers most of the southern part of Öland and is of no great practical value.  A few people have managed to scratch a living from the poor soil and graze a few animals on it since the Iron Age.

The thin chalky soils and the climate, together with grazing by livestock, has resulted in a specialised flora and fauna including juniper bushes, unusual wildflowers and many rare birds and insects …

It was townspeople who came to Öland for fresh air and to enjoy nature who first thought of the bare limestone wastes as beautiful – the people who lived there just accepted the way it was and learned to live with it!  The Alvar has been described as both the ugliest and the most beautiful landscape in Sweden!

Back on board, this is the view from Astraia – an unusual combination of threatening black clouds and evening sunshine highlighting the town of Borgholm and the forest of masts and shrouds …