Grisslehamn, Sweden - Kumlinge, Åland

Monday 16th August 1999

Today we said goodbye to Sweden and started our island-hopping towards Finland. We were crossing via the Åland archipelago and our first leg was on a large car ferry to the main island of the group. The Åland islands lie between Sweden and Finland with the string of smaller islands almost stretching to both countries and are fairly autonomous although with some political ties to Finland. Despite this the locals speak mostly Swedish and both currencies are freely accepted. All a bit unusual.

After sailing for two hours we reached the port of Eckerö, on the western edge of the main island. After the usual immigration formalities, there was no-one in sight, we headed along some quiet roads and found a spot for lunch beside one of the many inlets.

From there we headed to the southern tip to the main town of Mariehamn, a distance of about 40km. We had to decide on our route through the rest of the islands and book the ferries accordingly. In order to encourage you to spend more time (and money) on the smaller islands the ferry price is greatly reduced if you stop overnight on the trip to mainland Finland. We decided to stop on the island of Kumlinge. We'll buy a carton of milk tomorrow as our contribution to the local economy.

Our ferry was leaving at 6:15pm so we had about fifteen minutes spare before we'd have to head for the port, on the eastern side of the island. We took a quick look at the Pommern, a graceful four-masted ship from the 19th century that was used to transport wheat from Australia. We continued on to the ferry port and soon were on our way to Kumlinge. The small ferry was full of locals travelling between the islands and after an excellent one hour trip, working our way around the multitude of islands, we arrived at Kumlinge.

We began to look for a place to stop and were enjoying the colours of the evening light. After only ten minutes or so we'd crossed from one side of the island to the other but then came across the ideal spot, a small picnic place right beside an inlet. We settled down with a cup of tea and watched the colours change across the landscape as the sun began to set. Perfect.