Day 3

Friday, September 16

As I've gone to sleep very early last night I wake up with the rising sun again. The sky is covered with thick clouds and the wind is chilly as I wash behind the tent and make tea, then retreat into the tent as it is the most wind-proof place around. After breakfast, which is the same pan-wrecking mess as yesterday but as tasty, we set out for Borgholm, the island's largest city.

After a few steps we hear a distinct hissing and at the same time smell butane. I quickly unpack my backpack and unearth the gas cooker, apparently something I packed on top of it has opened the valve. Luckily there was no spark around.

Borgholm has the distinctive looks of an abandoned summer town, something I've never seen in this extremity as in Germany tourism ebbs and flows with the weather and people like to go on trips all year round. In Sweden though this seems to be different, apparently noone likes to travel in September, consequently noone bothers to open his harbourside cafe or the like after the summer is over.

 The town itself is modest with small houses, however I feel obliged to take a picture of this brand new landing stage!
In a bookstore at the town square I buy a copy of Ronja Röverdotter but my Swedish skills are no match for it yet. We also stop at a gas station to gas up and buy a new can for the cooker in case we run out of butane after our little accident earlier.

Todays' goal is the village of Klintemala which is on the main land a little ways farther North so we have to get off Öland. On the way we visit a large oak forest which used to belong to the park of Borgholm castle. The oaks grow right up to the seashore and some of them are centuries old. Others, however, have been fighting a losing battle against ivy, I suppose the climate makes them susceptible to parasites.


Occasionally we discover traces of cows. Apparently the Swedish graze their cows pretty much everywhere, they even ship them out to some islands in the archipelago!

As soon as we've left the Öland bridge the weather clears up and we follow the E22 north, listening to music. There's little traffic and the forest changes slowly as we drive, the rocks becoming even more prominent, forming huge mounds on which nothing grows but moss and pale lichen.

When we reach Klintemala I'm astonished by how small it is, only three rows of wooden houses and a small harbor with a café which is closed for the season. We can see the first islands of the archipelago, what we can't see is the canoe rental for which I picked this place - the weather report looks good and we're planning to rent a double kayak and spend one night out on one of the tiny islands.
As we ask some folks around the harbor they thell us that the rental been closed for years but they point us toward Västervik, a town some 40 kms farther along the coast which has a tourist information. As the internet doesn't want to work with us right now we drive straight there and, indeed, find the tourist information open on a Friday evening and after some phone calls also find someone who is willing to give us two kayaks tomorrow at 10 am - yes, two, I'm going to have my own. I've never done any of this before so this is going to be fun!

I check OSMand for a place to camp and we drive to the island of Händelöp 15 mins away from the town center of Västervik. The island is mostly woods with a small and picturesque fishing village and an equally small harbour at the other side where we park and set out into the forest looking for a nice spot near the shoreline.

Again we manage to find the only flat spot around, sitting on a rock above the sea surrounded by pines and crippled oaks, a steep slope leading down to the pebbly beach. We pitch the tent and Heiko makes a camp fire down at the beach, where we sit for a long time and eat Ramen soup, savouring the warmth and watching the moon rise over the water while listening to the sound of the waves.