Day 3: Exploring The Kvarken Archipelago

Ronan’s home and holiday cottages are all on The Kvarken Archipelago, a world heritage site, that was formed as glaciers retreated in the last ice age, depositing rocks to form long thing “moraine” islands, and with the retreat of the glaciers, causing the land to rise, 9mm a year, to this day!

On Wednesday, despite a late night on Tuesday, we got an early start to take a boat out to explore one of the islands on the archipelago, about a 30 minute boat ride from the coast, and the last island before you enter Swedish waters.

The boat ride itself was quite an adventure, especially as we entered the open sea, and the waves started spraying us all! But luckily the captain had rain gear for all of us!

The island itself was really lovely, and the captain dropped us off at one end of it, allowing us to hike through it all, passing by its famous lighthouse, collecting lots of mushrooms for dinner, coming across a memorial to a doomed Russian invasion of these remote islands back in 1809, and stopping off at a shelter at the end of the island for some lunch and – for Cynthia, a swim!

We took a different route back to the mainland and this time the water was almost perfectly calm, which made for some really lovely views!

After we got back from the island, we all cooked a big dinner, this time with all hands on deck! Stuart, Robert and Cynthia were hard at work, while quoting “Yes Chef” from our favorite Chicago drama, “The Bear” while myself and Conal (not photoed) were grilling outside and debating grilling techniques, Lena was making a lovely, locally foraged Bilberry pie, while Ronan was doing some final prep. All in all is was quite a feast