azdak

We are back, as brown as pirates from ten days of constant sunshine and wind (Wolfgang also has a surprisingly attractive Old Sea Dog beard, lightly grizzled with grey, but I've had to make do with the sun tan). We didn't drown, the plane didn't crash, and the children neither starved nor killed each other in our absence. It was, in short, the most fabulous holiday ever.

There are about 24,000 islands in the Stockholm archipelago, some big enough to support entire communities, with schools and supermarkets, farms and vets, and others which aren't more than a lump of rock with a tree sticking out. In between, there's a vast array of inhabited and uninhabited islands of every size and shape, and thanks to the Swedish law of Every Man's Right you can anchor anywhere that isn't actually somebody's front lawn and stay the night there. For free.

Here's a map of the archipelago. We mostly stuck to the central bit, going as far north as Ǻngsö (just below Furusund) and as far east as Lilla Nassa.
( Read more... )