Our last
Blog (RR3) was posted soon after our arrival in Århus, halfway up the east coast of Denmark. Since then we have sailed due east to just
north of Copenhagen before heading north up the west coast of Sweden
itself. We are now in Gothenburg.
 |
| Progress to date |
In Århus we met Britta Ulbrandt, a good friend of a childhood
friend of Helen’s. She in turn
introduced us to her friends Frantz, Birthe and Jim. Jim and Birthe have their own boat and have lent us some very
useful charts of Norway. Britta and Frantz took us by car on a day’s conducted
tour of the area which included an excellent Danish lunch at Restaurant Thorsmölle in Marselisborg, the leafy suburb where the
Danish Royal summer residence is located.
Århus is the second largest city in Denmark (after
Copenhagen). It is, in particular,
recognised as an architectural showcase with several notable buildings spanning
a century of Danish architecture. Among
them are a number of the buildings in the campus of Århus University, where Frantz lectures. Sprawled across a
green hillside overlooking the city, the University’s traditionally Danish
stark yellow brick buildings with their plain white rectangular windows are
most distinctive.
 | ||
| ARoS Art Museum topped with Rainbow Panorama. The whale helicopter is made of metal from a Flying Fortress called "Cherry Blossom" |
We were also impressed by the
City’s modern art museum, ARoS,
which we toured, with on its top the Rainbow Panorama, a circular glass walkway
featuring the colours of the spectrum.
It was most helpful to have two enthusiastic artists as our guides to an
area in which we are not exactly experts!
The City’s austerely striking Town Hall and old clock tower, both faced
with granite-grey marble slabs, is equally impressive. Completed during the Nazi occupation in
1941, it has a Register Office which is decorated with intricate floral designs
in which the artist cunningly concealed various Allied insignia.
Our passage east from Århus, off the north coasts of Fyn and Zealand, the islands
that bridge mainland Denmark with Sweden, was hardly challenging. There was no wind and the sea was like a
millpond. We therefore motored the whole day in hot sun to Gilleleje on the
northeast corner of Zealand at the entrance to the Øresund which separates Denmark and Sweden. The coastline of the two islands was
dominated by sand dunes backed by fir trees.
 |
| Relaxing in the sun as we motor east in zero wind |
The town of Gilleleje combines
being a busy working fishing port and a tourist centre. The harbour is crammed with trawlers, pot
boats and old ships. The boatyard in the middle was full of ships out of the
water in various stages of repair. The harbour is surrounded by smart
restaurants, fish shops and a smokehouse, all said to be selling “the day’s
catch”.
 |
| Looking for a space in Gilleleje's crowded fishing harbour |
We pulled
into Gilleleje specifically to meet Hanne and Jørgen Besser, who live close by at Dronningmölle in a delightful house which they built
themselves with their own direct access to the sandy shore – part of the Danish
“Riviera” which runs from Copenhagen, 40 miles south, along the shores of the Øresund. We have known Hanne and Jørgen for over 40 years – although we hadn’t seen them
since 1975! Keen sailors, they had a gap year with their two young children in
the seventies, sailing in the Mediterranean.
Later, when their children had left home, they took five years off to
sail on their own around the world.
They very kindly gave us an
extensive tour south along the coast of the Øresund to Copenhagen.
On the way we called in to see Kronberg at Helsingør (known in Shakespeare's Hamlet as Elsinore Castle). It is
strategically positioned at the narrowest point of the Sound, being only three
miles from Sweden. The 15th-century castle dominates both the Sound
and the town. It was built to enforce
the collection of tolls from ships sailing between the North Sea and the Baltic
– a practice that continued until the Americans refused to pay! The Sound is
now a major yachting area with over twenty harbours located along the Danish
coast.
 |
Kronberg in Helsingør (Shakespeare's Elsinore Castle) |
We couldn’t visit Copenhagen
without going to see, together with hordes of other tourists, the Little
Mermaid and also the massive new 16-kms-long Øresund Bridge which connects Denmark by road and rail to
Malmö, the third largest city in
Sweden.
 |
| The Little Mermaid, Copenhagen |
While moored in Gilleleje we were
very fortunate to have Henrik and Ulla Willumsen from Rungsted, near
Copenhagen, as neighbours. Their extensive knowledge of sailing on the west
coast of Sweden was most useful in helping us to finalise a strategy for our
forthcoming cruise up that coast.
In brief, the traditional cruising
grounds on the west coast of Sweden start at Gothenburg and continue north to
Norway. Up to there the coast is low lying and somewhat featureless. It is an
agricultural and forestry area. We
therefore decided to push on to Gothenberg in order to optimise the time
available in the more interesting areas to its north.
We were also concerned with not
getting caught too far south since, according to the pilot books, the passage
to Gothenburg entailed traversing open sea with a long fetch from the
Skaggerak, a lee shore and an adverse prevailing wind.
The conditions looked favourable
so we decided to do the leg to Gothenburg in two stages, stopping halfway at
Varberg in order to allow Helen to find a dentist to fix a tooth she’d broken
on a particularly nutty piece of bread! The repair was done most effectively by
an exceedingly young Swedish blonde who ran her own dental clinic in the town
centre.
Varberg is a charming, very open
spa town with wide streets and a huge main square. A vast grey 13th-century
moated fortress, which can be seen from 15 miles out to sea, looms over the
harbour and town. Within its walls is
an 18th-century prison that housed “lifers” until 1931. Today it is
a Youth Hostel, painted custard and cream, where one can spend a night in the
cells.
 |
| Varberg's imposing fortress guarding the entrance to the harbour |
In the nineteenth century the town
was a very fashionable bathing resort – which it still is today, with its
Moorish-style bath-house on stilts in the sea.
It is also now one of the most important harbours in Sweden for the
export of cut timber.
 |
| Varberg's Moorish-style bath-house |
With 20 knots of wind from the
south we had a great sail (although in pouring rain) all the way from Varberg
to Gothenburg, where we box-moored in the Royal Swedish Yacht Club (GKSS) at
the mouth of the River Göta which
leads up to the city. We have, incidentally, made a temporary rubbing strake on
either side of the boat out of a large length of rope that Mike found in a skip –
in order to limit the damage being done to our hull when box-mooring in a confined
space.
 |
| Temporary rubbing strake - and an offending post! |
From about 15 miles south of Gothenburg the bland pastoral coastline began to change, becoming broken and
studded with islands and numerous granite rocks. These were well marked, one has to say, but nevertheless made the
sail more challenging.
We arrived at the Club on Race
Night. Clearly one of the
prerequisites of membership is the ability to reverse out of a box-mooring
(without a motor) and sail off (and back again later) without causing any
damage to the neighbouring yachts. We
were most impressed as we watched from the Club House balcony.
 |
| Royal Swedish Yacht Club, Gothenburg |
Gothenburg, the second largest
city in Sweden, is a working port and ferry terminal. Its tram system covers
the city and all routes run at approximately 10-minute intervals. The 30-minute ride from the marina into the
centre cost only £2.
 |
| Waiting for the tram into Gothenburg |
The city was founded on its
present site in the seventeenth century by Gustav II Adolf. Dutch builders played an important part in
shaping the city. Still fearful of further Danish attacks, the Swedes employed
Dutch experts to construct a defensive canal system in the centre. There are many fine buildings, a grid system
of roads and canals, tree-lined avenues and spacious parkland. Terraces of grand merchant houses feature
carved stone, stucco and painted tiles.
Reflecting the all-important trading links between Sweden and the Far
East, there is Chinoiserie detailing on many of the buildings. The imposing old
headquarters of the Swedish East India Company houses the Stadsmuseum, the principal museum. Our abiding impressions of the city,
however, are likely to be the train station, with its ornate wooden interior,
the indoor fish market – and the fact that it had not stopped raining stair-rods
for 48 hours!
 |
| Wet statues outside the Fish Market |
One of the main reasons for coming
to Gothenburg was to meet up with Lasse and Mona Alverbo, who keep their boat nearby. We first met them in the
Azores three years ago towards the end of their 18-month sabbatical to the
Caribbean. They generously brought supper with them in the form of a large
quantity of local prawns, with a fresh baguette and chilled wine. They are
both very knowledgeable about the coastline north to Norway and this
was extremely useful to us in planning our next leg to Oslo.
We need to reach Oslo by 28 May to catch our flight back to the UK for Will and Lesley’s wedding on
2 June – before returning on 5 June to continue our Scandinavian cruise.
No comments:
Post a Comment