The Swedish Archipelago
When one thinks of Sweden, one thinks of Stockholm. But there are really lovely parts of the country that are not necessarily the city. The Swedish Archipelago is formed of more than one-thousand islands and islets, all covered in lovely forest of Scots Pine, and other interesting trees. Today we went to one of the protected areas with a big island, called Utö. It is one of the best organized and complete, as it even has a small youth hostel, quite hidden among the vegetation. But the crown jewel of this island is the amount of iron in the rocks, which led to it being discovered and used since the year 800 A.D. A very rich lode of this metal was used for hundreds of years, and it wasn’t till 1886 when it was closed. There is more mineral there, but probably not commercially viable. Today the immediate area is walled off to avoid accidents, as the cliffs of the mine are very steep, and the two pits are full of water.
We did different walks into the area, nature, for photography, and aerobic. A great number of plants were seen, including, even this late in the year, a field of red poppies with blue bachelor buttons, and a lovely array of other plants in the daisy family. We also walked to an old windmill, almost perfectly conserved. One can access the structure, which, once inside, you can see how huge it is. This was one of the highlights of our walks. Mushrooms and quite a few wildflowers were encountered also.
At the end of our morning, we sailed into Stockholm, but stopped short of the magnificent city and went along the lovely King’s canal on Zodiacs. We were surprised midway when hidden behind a small bridge, one of our Zodiacs appeared with the hotel crew offering us a delicious punch! Then we proceeded on into The City.
