Bicycles aren't just glorified shopping trollies
We slept well, in spite of everything, and the morning was much calmer. However everyone was planning an early departure and soon there was only us and Klaus left on the quay. When we arrived we had arranged that we would move to the inner quay for Wednesday, but even with Klaus’s help, it took so long to get up our heavy anchor, not helped by the fact that it came up absolutely caked with heavy, clay mud, that there was only one space left with a stern buoy as several boats had come in to fill the spaces left by those who moved on elsewhere, even though it was relatively early.
Ted on the windlass and Klaus with a stern line to an empty buoy as we recovered our anchor and moved to the only berth with a buoy left
Klaus and his wife and family. The 3year old none the worse for her involuntary ducking the day before Eventually we were tied up, Ted had helped Klaus with his departure, and we were ready to set off on our bicycle expedition to the other end of the island. For once the wind was relatively light and the sun was shining intermittently. This was the first time we had just used the bikes recreationally and not just to get to shops. They coped admirably (as did we) with the rather rough track from our harbour down to the village in the South. The island doesn’t really have roads or cars. The preferred mode of transport seemed to be mopeds with the body part of a trailer welded on the front, but we also saw a couple of quad bikes. The ride down passed a couple of things the guide book considered worthy of visit – the Pest Cemetery (site of the burial of victims of some sort of plague in the 1700s) and the Labyrinth, which is supposed to have powers to ensure safety at sea and dates back to the iron age. In truth they were both quite underwhelming and we have risked being unsafe at sea by not walking the Labyrinth. It also revealed that the inhabitants just love sculptures and there were odd shaped bits of this and that everywhere along the way, with small sticks bearing attribution information (no-one we had ever heard of).
You can see why I was underwhelmed
These are both examples of sculptures along the way The lighthouse is claimed to be the oldest Swedish one, first lit in 1651. However I think this is a cheat as they do have an older one but it was built on land that was Danish at the time. The site around the lighthouse was a major part of the Swedish defences aimed at maintaining their neutrality in WW2, with 3 big guns, and also was used as an observation post because of its key position on sea routes out of the Baltic.
Even the lighthouse has the statutory sculpture (not the guy on the bike)
Views from the lighthouse
The fishing harbour complete with table for dealing with fish.
After stopping for a cup of tea at the village’s pub/shop (tea was a do it yourself affair with flasks of hot water and the shop supplying a tea bag), we went to the Landsort Battery on our way back. This was a cold war emplacement, one of six built to deter enemy attack from the east, but barely completed before the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc and its function was obsolete. It was atom bomb proof but merely armed with 12cm cannon, capable of firing a 22kg shell every other second at targets up to 30km away. Both this and the earlier one at the lighthouse must have involved a huge amount of quarrying through solid rock to enable so much of the accommodation to be underground.
Before supper there was just time to scramble up the rocks by the harbour entrance and take some phots of the harbour in the setting sun. A much more peaceful night ended an interesting day.
Just after we got back this unfortunate boat managed to foul its anchor warp round its rudder while trying to moor up and it took a surprising amount of time to get free
Overlooking the harbour as the sun goes down
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The East harbour, where the ferries run
