Life has been a whirling merry-go-round for the last couple of weeks, making us long for the quiet moments we shared on our boat, out at sea and far from the madding crowd. I'm sure that it is nothing out of the ordinary in everyday life, but the fact that we have been largely cut off from society for almost five months makes this dive into the deep end of dealing with people and commitments quite stressful.

We have arrived home to a frenzy of busy working days and trying to negotiate the delicate juggling needed to deal with others after these months of blissful and solitary freedom. It was both amusing and a little sad to return to the fray and see that not much has changed while we were away. There were very good feelings, especially when we were warmly welcomed home by dear friends and we could catch up with their news. But how sad to see the same old problems among some people. However, having been away for so long, we could look at them engaged in their petty little feuds and jealousies with new and far more detached eyes. I guess people will always be people and one must learn to deal with all kinds. At the moment, all we can do is continue on with those busy working days, bask in the warmth of family and good friends and take any opportunity that arises to take off with the boat and enjoy some breathing space and solitude.

We were also a little taken aback to see that boats are already being prepared to be raised on to land. It only feels like yesterday that we were here launching them! The summer has really sped by with uncanny speed. I still can't believe that people in Sweden do all of this work only to have their boats in the water for a few weeks a year. The weather, though cool is still fabulous and it seems a pity that more people are not out on the water to enjoy it all.




We decided to snatch a weekend away sailing, making sure to be back on Monday for the working week. Mondays are always the busy days for Lars-Göran, but it still gives us a couple of days to say hello to our own piece of archipelago. It also gave us a chance to test out Bruce and Sheila's new summer stuga (cottage). Every Swede longs to own a little red wooden cottage by the sea or in the woods. A stuga allows one an escape from work and the state's constant monitoring and just be at one with nature and your own thoughts, far removed from the world. We consider our boat to be the equivalent of the summer cottage, with the added bonus of its being mobile.

With Bruce and Sheila, one of the drawbacks in taking them to the boat is that we have to transport their cage as well. As we don't have a car, we have to use a trolley back and forth. They travel in style in my backpack, but I still have that damn cage to bring. As we usually have a billion other last minute things to bring, it usually involves more trips to and fro than we'd really like. So we bought them a cage just for the boat. And in keeping with the tradition of it being their summer home, it is of course red. And why isn't it wooden, I hear you ask? I think that Bruce and Sheila with their penchant for nibbling on anything close at hand would reduce a wooden cage to sawdust in a week.




We have pondered about where to go and decided that Landsort might be a good place to re-visit. We haven't stopped there for at least three years and I often wonder why as at one time it was our favourite haunt. We know that the guest harbour closed at the end of August, so we ought to be in peace there and the island has the added bonus of great walking tracks, beautiful vistas and a friendly, open feeling. I should say that Landsort is the name given to the tiny village on the island of Öja, though many people call the whole island Landsort. If you look at the map in the above link, you can see it is a long, thin piece of land, with the harbour for visitors at the northern end and the village itself several kilometres away at the south. I'm looking forward to seeing it again as we have always had good times there, right from that very first sighting I had of the island back in the summer of 2001, when we passed by on our journey from Stockholm to Nynäshamn to bring our boat down to her new home.




This was the first time that I'd sailed in the archipelago and I was entranced with everything I saw and was especially struck by this gorgeous community with it's tiny little dollhouse cottages. It reminded me of something magical from a fairy tale and over that and subsequent summers we spent a lot of time here and we think of the lighthouse as part of our home.

The sailing was wonderful, with Fiona moving through the water smmothly and at speed. Oh bliss! It was clear and sunny out on the water, but I could see on the mainland that it was clouding over. We could see a thunder cloud from a distance – very dark, threatening. Its shape resembled a funnel turned on its side and looked most peculiar. We saw lightning and rain at various places and hoped it would stay away from us. There was only a low rumble of thunder where we were and I watched the storm head northwards while we were going south. I still marvel at how different the conditions are on the mainland compared with the outer islands. It is as though we are in another parallel world.




We passed several bare, rocky islands that reminded us of some of the areas of the west coast. And not for the first time did we wonder what had possessed us to go there and look for landscape that was under our very noses. Lars-Göran commented that he'd quite forgotten just how beautiful it was around here and I had to remind him that we used to bring special friends out here for a day's sailing, often choosing the inner route through Draget's Canal and returning home via the outer side of the islands. And something that stood out for me was that come rain or shine, this was always a place that left us feeling happy.

We discovered that the harbour was indeed closed for the season, but that one of the transport ferries was moored there. We chose a spot just behind the ferry, thinking that if the wind and waves turned to the west, we would get some form of shelter from the bulk of the boat. The little wooden cottages around the harbour were deserted now and the silence was almost total, with only the gentle swish of the water on the rocks and the plaintive cry of a seabird to break the spell.




We unloaded our bikes and set off for the four kilometer ride to the village. The roadway winds its way through forests, pasture and rocks and is always a relaxing and interesting route to take. The surface is well maintained and firm, so it is not too difficult, even for someone as unfit as me. We made several stops as the hills became too steep for my tired old legs and anyway, Lambi decided that she didn't want to be chauffeured in the basket. She had a new lease of life since we've been home and now decided that she wanted to do her own puppy marathon using her four little legs. It was safer to walk when she wanted to run around as she has no road sense at all.

Along the way, there are several places where you could take a short detour and look at the view from high on a hill. Across the water to the north west, we saw our favourite little village of Krokskär, the nearest neighbours to Landsort.




The weather has been unseasonably warm, not that we are complaining. Usually by now we are breaking out into thermals, sturdy boots, hats, gloves and down-lined jackets, but this year, it feels more like spring than autumn. It isn't only us who thinks along those lines. I saw plenty of spring flowers blooming at the side of the road, which looked unusual alongside the obvious autumn signs of mushrooms and golden leaves. I thought to myself that if this was midsummer, I would have no trouble finding a selection of seven different wildflowers to make a wreath. It seems that the flowers have been tricked into blooming too soon and we even saw bumblebees busy pollinating them.




Another scenic point on the road to the village gave us a view to the south west, with the mainland in the distance, leading to the route towards Oxelösund. It is open and exposed around here, with the next land east of this point being Finland and while it looks serene and picturesque today in the gentle autumn light, when the wind blows (as it does frequently at this point) then the sea presents quite a different and far more sinister face.




By the roadside, we found more flowers, pointing to the confusion that mother nature has presented this season. It was like a spring shadow in the midst of brilliant blue skies, sun-golden leaves - with a slight autumn chill on the breeze. It is all so strange. Weather experts blame this unusually warm weather on warm wind blowing from South Western Europe, specifically from North Africa. While the tourists must be loving it, I wonder whether this is part of a more long term weather change. Typical, eh? Just when I move to a country that has snow, there is a threat of global warming!




And a little further along we found a lonely clump of daisies. I wonder how they will react to the first heavy frost, which surely must be just around the corner. These daisies were located near one of the historic sites on the islands - the Pest Cemetery. Well, that was what I thought when I saw the sign Pestkyrkogården. "So is that where they buried people like me who are a nuisance?" I asked Lars-Göran, who rolled his eyes and told me that pest meant plague (which I already knew) and when I read the information board near the site, they explained that a plague epidemic (possibly cholera) had hit even this isolated place in 1710 and over half the island's inhabitants had died.




After our leisurely ride/walk down through the woods, we came into the main village with its pretty little fishermen's cottages and their enviable location right on the water. This is a close knit place with around 40 people who permanently live here and many others who just come for the summer.




Over at the eastern harbour, the waves are rolling in steadily. There are two small harbours at this end of the island, used by the ferries, the pilot boats and locals. As it is so exposed, they have a harbour on each side and your mooring place is determined by the direction the wind is blowing. While the western side is quite calm, here on the east the water is rougher as it is facing the wind. It's a tight space at the best of times and I admire the boats who squeeze in past the rocks, which are very inconveniently placed right in the middle of the entrance.




From this point, we could look back towards the village, clustered around the base of the lighthouse. There are mostly small cottages and a few villas on the island. There are no apartment blocks and very little new housing is built which means that it can be unbelievably hard and very expensive to buy a house here. Most of them are passed down through the family and very few come on the local market. I know this because I always look.




In the above photo you will see a large white home on the left. They had a "For Sale" sign on it and we had a bit of a snoop around. You are quite isolated out here as you need to travel on a 30 minute boat trip, then a one hour bus trip to get to any place that has a shop or services like doctor, library etc. On the plus side, the location is stunning, so it was no wonder that when I checked out the asking price I saw that it was nearly 4,000,000 kr. Ouch!




Of course, you lie right in the pathway to the lighthouse, which was built by the Dutch merchant Johan van der Hagen 1658 and is the oldest Swedish lighthouse still in operation. The emphasis in Swedish is deliberate. There are two lighthouses on the south west coast (Kullen and Falsterbo) which are older than this, but at the time they were built, that section of the country was part of Denmark. A small, but it would seem very important distinction. As well as being Sweden’s best kept lighthouse, it is also the brightest one in the archipelago.




We decided to save a visit to the lighthouse for another day as we had seen those dark clouds massing over the horizon and thought we ought to make tracks back to the boat. On the western side of the islands we saw more of the spring flowers and we saw several beautiful little forest birds flitting here and there. They were too fast to be captured on camera but we spent quite some time enjoying several blue tits, great tits and robins playing around in the eaves of the homes. This island is considered a bird watcher's mecca and we saw several guys with their gigantic telephoto lenses and tripods tramping through the countryside to watch out for birds migrating south for the winter. There is also a bird station set up on the island just outside of town.




In the lee of the island, all is calm and still blue as the clouds have not reached this point yet. There are several little inlets with small piers constructed right on the rocks and small open boats moored by the homes. You are able to build so close to the water here as the Baltic has no tides to worry about and as the land mass is rising as well, there is no risk of flooding. The rocks a little further out provide a natural seawall, so you would be well protected in this spot.




And look, right by the water's edge, a couple of orange calendula with their distinctive large and dramatically beautiful flowers. This is a plant that I associate with the Mediterranean rather than the icy shores of the north and I can only hazard a guess that it is self sown from someone's potted plant as we saw several of them dotted around the main harbour. It was a welcome splash of colour.

To complete our little journey, we retired to the deck of the pub.




In summer, this is the centre of life in the island as it lies right next to the tiny shop and the landing point for the ferry. Today it was shuttered and lifeless, but I had very cleverly thought to bring our own afternoon coffee and cake that Lambi seems to be taking quite an interest in.

Very often the best time to come and discover the joys of a place like Landsort is during the quiet times, when the high season is over and life starts to return to normal for the locals. The sun's rays still cover the area in warmth. The leaves are beginning to fall from trees and the countryside has new and rich colours. I really enjoy the quiet season, when all hustle and bustle is gone. Taking a walk along the shore through a cold wind, wrapped up in woolies and scarves is an experience that lets you know you're alive. While is doesn't compare to a warm summer's day and there may be no need to pack a bikini, these brisk autumn walks on the beach take on a serene and romantic character of their own. Especially when I am lucky enough to have that special person to share it with me.