I’d heard about Bohuslan because
of its climbing, and had been there a few years ago for a few days of climbing
from Oslo. It is, however, also famous for its coastline, with many fjords and
thousands of islands scattered along the coast. My mum and I were looking for a
nice place to go on a paddling adventure, somewhere with a wild feel, but with
not too wild waters because - although I know how to paddle - I haven’t spent
much time on the sea. Bohusland sounded ideal; no bears or sharks as far as I
know, not too cold, relatively sheltered water, and not too many armed
militants – a problem in some places I’ve thought about going climbing.
We rented kayaks from Christina, at Kayaks i Grundsund, for an eight day trip. Grundsund is a small town in
southern Bohuslan, south of the larger town of Lysekil. We got there pretty
easily by flying to Goteborg and then getting a couple of buses north to
Grundsund in about 3-4 hours. We wandered down to the harbour and quickly found
Christina’s place at the far end. Christina was busy sorting out a bunch of
paddlers getting on and off the water, but she showed us to her rental
apartment and said she would help us get sorted later. We found a great small supermarket
that only sold delicious things, had a tasty lunch and spent the afternoon
chilling.
Later on we were able to look at
some maps and a brilliant booklet full of information on camping spots on many
of the islands within a few days paddle. This included information on the
landings, the amount of shelter and the quality of the ground, which began with
phrases like...
“A mysterious yet inviting
island...”
“What an island, it has it all!”
“An exotic gem!”
Some sounded less good, one that
I can remember said that “there is enough ground for one tent peg and you will
be sleeping on a bed of muscles” We did visit this island but couldn’t find
either a place for a peg or a bed of muscles, it was very barren.
We made a general plan to paddle
around Orust which is a large island, maybe comparable to Anglesey, that
Christina said would be nice to do over about 5 days and is usually quite
sheltered. We could then use any leftover days to quest north via Lysekil to
explore the many islands farther out to sea.
The next day we chose our boats
and received our spray decks and buoyancy aids that we were borrowing. Kay and
Helen liked the boats and I was happy to agree with them as they seemed fine to
my untrained eye. After packing we were under way about 1pm. After about an
hour of paddling, we stopped for lunch on a beach somewhere to the south. This
would more or less be the pace over the next week, it was great!
Vallero was our first island,
it’s about a km across, has good camping, nice beaches and cows. It wasn’t such
a nice stay because the weather was bad this day and it started raining in the
evening, forcing us to retreat into our tents. The weather the next day was
better and then after this we were blessed with perfect weather for the rest of
our trip, it was continuously sunny with exceptionally calm seas.
Our next stop was Halso, an
island apparently famous for being the home of a murderer called Halso-Johannes
who was executed around 1860, I think, the last person to have been executed in
Sweden.
We developed a good routine,
getting up – coffee or maybe two – packing up camp, getting on the water
between 10 and 11am, finding a nice spot for lunch – coffee – browsing the
island brochure for a nice island for the evening, paddling there in the
afternoon, exploring, coffee, dinner and another coffee before retiring. I
didn’t think I could be easily beaten in terms of coffee drinking, but this
routine pushed me to my caffeine processing limits.
Every three or four days we’d
need to find some habitation big enough to have a shop so that we could
resupply with food and water. I tried trailing a fishing line, but after hours
and several attempts, I caught no fish and had tired shoulders from having to
compensate for the drag on one side. I tried to fish one evening by tying the
hooks to a log, digging up some worms and putting them on the hooks and
throwing the whole thing into the sea. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t yield many
fish and left me depressed about my fishing abilities. This was even more
trying since during the evening, the fish would come into shore and jump up and
down to taunt us.
After five days, we had
circumnavigated Orust, and headed north to Lysekil to visit the town and get
fresh supplies. This gave us a nice break in which to change out of our paddling
gear, take a walk around town and visit some cafes to top up on caffeine. Afterwards
we headed further north to St. Korna Brevik, described as “What an island, it
has it all!”. Initially, after landing and stepping out of our boats into ankle
deep sea sludge that stank, we were not thrilled by this island. However, it
did get better, the camp ground was good, there were some great swimming spots
and an amazing sunset.
From here we only two and a bit
more days before we needed to be back in Grundsund. We decided to go back
south, past Grundsund, and explore some small islands and the town of
Gullholmen that we’d missed on the first time around. We found some beautiful
small rocky islands and Gullholmen was a great place to spent half a day;
drinking coffee and eating ice cream. Our penultimate night was the worst of
all, the camp site we chose turned out to be totally sheltered and a hotbed of
mosquitoes. After getting chewed up cooking dinner, it was straight into a hot
tent until we could escape the next day.
The trip was a lot more relaxing
than I think we all had expected, mainly due to the perfect weather. But the
area is also perfect for paddling, being blessed with so many islands where it
is possible to camp and the Swedes not really subscribing to the concept of
private land. I hope to get the chance to paddle there again someday and
explore the islands further north, this would mean two more booklets full of
amusingly described islands, but I would have to learn to read Swedish before I
could understand them!
