Just some photos from Obbola in the last days.
A flock of fieldfares in our rowan tree ❦ an icy morning by the coast ❦ sunlit ice fog hovering above the bay Vitskärsudden ❦ three roe deers eating rowan berries, leftovers of the fieldfares’ meal.
| English | German | Swedish | Norwegian |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fieldfare | Wacholderdrossel | Björktrask | Gråtrost |
Clouds are moving eastwards where they block the low hanging sun, but here and there the sun peeks through holes giving the whole thing a dramatic touch.
It is chilly and ice fog hovers over the sea. I take a promenade by the icy coast.
It is quite clear and not too windy at temperatures round -12 °C. Yesterday I dug out the kayak from the snow, today it is time to take a tour. It’s a short but a beautiful one.
After the tour the line for the kayak rudder was frozen. The kayak is a bit too large for taking it in so I had to improvise a bit. Well, it worked.
Today is the day of winter solstice. We could see the sun rise at 09:25 while having a comfortable Sunday morning breakfast. Today’s motive: the rowan tree under which Annika and I got married in 2020, taken through the windows of our living room.
It was four days ago that I arrived in my “home home”, Annika’s and my house in Obbola. And we got some winter weather. First we got twenty centimetres of snow. We took a Saturday promenade to our favourite beach Vitskärsudden which looked like this:
It continued snowing and blowing the whole Saturday but then it cleared up in the night and Sunday morning the sky was clear at temperatures round -12 °C. I waited until 9:20 to watch the sun rise over the sea.
Later that day Annika and I took the very same promenade to Vitskärsudden again but it looked so differently in the sun.
In the night it became stormy. We have experienced some storms here before, but this was the very first time that I couldn’t open the front door at all. It was completely blocked by snow. I had to climb out of the snow-plastered kitchen window and shovel away the compace snow drift that blocked the door.
And this is how our house looked like some hours ago. Now it is clear and calm weather and -14 °C.
After quite some travelling in the last weeks I finally arrived in Obbola, Sweden, my “home home” yesterday night. Today it started snowing a bit and I wanted to go outside to take a break from home office.
I went to the coast by our house where parts of the bay were frozen.
I haven’t been running for four weeks, so let’s go …
I put on my running shoes from Icebug. They have so many spikes that you can run on bare ice. I start on the doorstep and turn to take the trail called Spåret. This will give me a lap of round 5 km. But it was not so easy as expected. A lot of trees lay across the trail. A reminder of the storm three weeks ago.
I can go round these obstacles but soon give up running for another reason. Some parts of Spåret are bare ice but the thin layer of fresh snow glues itself to the soles of my running shoes making the spikes useless. After I slid several times I decide to stop running and go home. Total running distance: 0.78 km :-D
When running does not work, let’s go …
This takes a bit more preparation. But finally I have found the paddle and the waterproof bag for the mobile phone and am dressed in my survival suit – Teletubbie style.
I drag the kayak to the shore and then through the shallow water. Slushy ice is swimming on the sea surface. To my surprise another layer of ice is grounded.
Then I walk on the ice. Will it hold or break? I don’t know yet, but I do know, the water is shallow here.
The ice holds. When the icy layer gets thinner and softer I enter the kayak. Sometimes I use my hands to push myself forward, sometimes ice claws, sometimes the paddle. Anyhow it seems to take ages until I finally reach the open sea.
To my surprise I meet two other kayakers. That have never happened to my here before. They found a better place to set in their kayaks. Will winter paddling get popular here?
Anyhow, I haven’t planned a longer kayak tour and so I only round the small islet Lillskär and then head back to shore. First there are soft ice floes that I can paddle through.
Then I reach some fast ice. It is too thick for paddling and too thin to bear the weight of the kayak with me inside. I exit the kayak and “walk” it while breaking the ice with my knees. The ice gets thicker and I can kneel on it without breaking through. Now I crawl on my knees for a while until I can finally stand up and drag the kayak ashore. On the photo you can see the different stages.
Finally I’m ashore again. Total paddling distance: 0.91 km. :-D :-D
But it was fun!
After two weeks on the sea between Svalbard and Greenland I took the plane from Longyearbyen back to Tromsø and two days later the bus to Narvik and the train to Umeå. Since Sunday morning I have been in the familiar surroundings of my real home (“home home”) in Obbola again.
Two days ago I walked Spåret, a four kilometre promenade through the forests near us. It was warm and summery but also visible that Autumn has begun in parallel. What a contrast the forests are to the open ocean in the Fram Strait, the ice sheet near Greenland or the treeless valleys of Svalbard.
It’s midsummer day in Sweden. Yesterday Annika and I danced around the midsummer pole and ate huge amounts of salmon, potatoes and eggs with roe, just as you use to do on a typical midsommarafton. One thing however was not typical: It didn’t rain at all. And since the night was still clear and beautiful, Annika and I decided to make a small kayak tour. At 22:40 we were clear to leave.
The eastern sky was blue and purple and the trees on the island Bredskarssten almost black – but it was not dark although some of the photos may look like. The sun had just gone down.We decided to paddle to the tiny archipelago Obbolstenarna.
When we arrived there all seagulls flew up into the air screeching. Did we disturb them? No, it was an eagle that quickly was chased off by the seagulls. We circumnavigated the islands and headed back east, where some of the spare clouds still caught some sunlight.
And now? There was no noticeable wind and kayaking has been pretty effortless until now. Annika and I had the same thought: kayaking to the southern tip of Stömbäck-Kont. We’ve been there often, but always by car. Stömbäck-Kont is 30 km from our home by car but only 5 km by kayak. So, let’s go …
Meanwhile it had become a bit darker and the flat sea and sky looked like fantastic paintings. Like from another world.
We passed the sea side of the island Tarv, and turned north behind the small island Gåshällan and some islands I don’t know the names of. Then we headed west.
This black shadow ahead, is it the rocks of Strömbäck-Kont? It is hard to see because the contrast is low. But my navigation was correct and soon we approached the barbecue area, where we were welcomed by the mosquitoes, that luckily were not present on the open sea. Time for a short break to stretch one’s legs.
The stop was pretty short, because the mosquitoes just loved us and we have quite a lot of them this year! So we jumped back into our kayaks and followed the coast a bit north were we could hear music.
Here lies Simphamn, both a nice sandy beach and a marina. A bunch of very expensive looking yachts were anchored at the boat bridge and apparently some people had had a party on one of the yachts. We paddled round the small island with the clubhouse.
Now it was time to head east back to the island Tarv and circumnavigate it clockwise. Most sea birds were relaxed. The geese more or less ignored us while the terns were ignoring us. They were hunting. Again and again they plunged vertically into the sea to catch fish.
After a while we headed south and reached the opening between Tarv and a peninsula connected to the main land. Here we reached the open sea again.
From there we know the way home by heart. Passing the bay Vitskärsudden, following the coast while avoiding the many rocks in the water and after two more kilometres we were back home.
Now we only had to drag the kayaks back to our house through a field of lupins. (I will pick them. They are an invasive species and we want to get rid of them.) And then – after 12.5 km of an extraordinary beautiful night paddling we were back home. Now it was a quarter to two – definitely time to sleep!
For those who love maps or live nearby, this is the track:
I’m sitting in the train travelling from Obbola, my “home home” to Tromsø, my “work home”. Normally the journey would have taken 18 to 19 hours but this train is four hours late. That will probably extend my journey to 37 hours including an overnight stay in Narvik.
The last days we had full vårvinter (literally “spring winter”) which is the transition period between winter and spring. Not only in my opinion this is an own season. And so it can look like:
The weather is fine and calm. The drift ice that I paddled through the day before is mostly gone. I take another kayak tour to the islands Obbolstenarna and now also the sea is calm enough to circumnavigate the islands and the ice cap on the rocky shallow.
After the tour I continue my work in home office.
It is raining at lunch time and the fog hides the horizon of the Baltic Sea.
The drift ice has come back over night. The day is sunny.
In the village at lunchtime I spot the first Tussilago which always has been the first flower to bloom in vårvinter. And in front of a house I see some crocuses. It is +7.5 °C.
Some hours later I take a short and icy “farewell kayak tour”. It gets harder to find a good place to set in the kayak. And on the way back I was right when I doubted that the small ice floe would carry my weight. It didn’t. The ice has started to rot and then it’s not stable anymore even when 10 cm thick. So – be prepared.
We still have 50 cm of snow in the garden but round our rowan tree the snow has melted. The birds love to be there picking for food.
That’s today. I’m sitting in the heavily delayed train heading north. The forest ground and the bogs are covered with snow but the first patches of blueberry twigs are visible, too. It’s nice to see the landscape, but I’ll have a long journey ahead and I’m going to take a nap now.
After yesterday’s ugly and windy conditions the weather today looked quite promising. A good ooportunity to take another kayak tour. At eight o’clock I put on dry suit and life vest and dragged my kayak to the open water by the islet Lillskär.
I paddled slowly to give two pairs of swans time to retreat and then kayaked round the islet. Here a large field of ice floes awaited me.
There were open patches of water, but mostly I paddled through dense ice fields that were moved by long and smooth waves. The large floes were 30 cm thick, some of them even thicker.
How does paddling through the ice work? Most ice floes are small enough to be pushed aside. I tried to paddle around the larger ice floes. Sometimes I bumped into them. and sometimes I just paddled over them by purpose – “brute force”.
After a kilometre I reached open water and then another ice field with thinner and smaller ice floes. Here I could just paddle through and the transparent ice glittered in the sun.
I wanted to reach the “ice berg” south of the islands Obbolstenarna. Out there is a large shallow with some rocks. There the waves build a temporary island of ice and snow. This year it was two to three metres high. I didn’t dare to circumnavigate this icy island because in the shallows around the waves were high and breaking. I considered this being too risky to kayak there since I was alone.
I didn’t kayak around Obbolstenarna neither for the same reasons so I returned. I could see the Finnland ferry in the harbour some kilometres away. Soon I entered the ice field again.
As on the way there I paddled through the floes without any problems. I only landed in a dead end once and that was on purpose for the photo.
Since the weather was great it was so exceptionally beautiful out there I parked my kayak on a larger ice floe and took a short break.
Then it was time to return to the ice edge, walk back to our house and enter my office because this was my first day of a week of home office. Farewell ice floes. Thanks for good company.
Yesterday Annika and I took a winter bath in the ice free bay Vitskärsudden, now it is snowing and the wind has blown back a lot of ice floes. Too unstable too walk on, too thick to paddle through. How shall we paddle kayak tomorrow under these conditions?
In the morning the sun is shining and the ice floes are gone. I walk to the ice edge that is round about 200 metres from shore. The ice is stable. After breakfast Annika and I dress properly (warm clothes, dry suit, life jacket) and drag our kayaks to the ice edge.
We get into our kayaks on the ice and then hop into the water. Then we turn right and are calmly paddling following the coastal line to the bay Vitskärsudden. First we navigate through some larger ice floes and the usual rocks (our “underwater archipelago”). When we enter the bay a layer of fresh ice is in front of us. It is so thin, that we can paddle through it effortlessly. The sounds of the braking ice are fascinating.
We are not alone. Three other kayakers are further out while other people are taking a walk ashore. One of them took a photo that we found on Facebook:
After we paddle back we build up momentum and paddle right onto the shallow ice shield. We already can see our house – shortly later we are there, longing for a shower.
In the evening the wind has turned and ice floes are drifting back ashore.
Did we have calm weather yesterday? Well, not today. The wind is pretty strong and wet snow and sleet is falling from a white-grey sky. The horizon is hidden in the fog.
I take a promenade to Vitskärsudden again. The wind has filled the whole bay with small and large ice floes that wobble in the waves.
I am walking along the ice covered coastal line until I come to the open sea. Here the waves are throwing water, slush and ice ashore so that the shore is covered by metre high ice walls. This view is impressive, pretty arctic and also a bit frightening.
The waves are high and break early. It’s hardly imaginable that Annika and I had a fine and calm kayak tour yesterday. Good timing!
I have five other days in Obbola before I’ll head back to Tromsø. I’m quite curious whether I’m able to take another kayak tour. But today the weather looks quite promising.
Today I took my first kayak tour in 2024. It was much too windy to do a longer tour (and proper photos) and my walking distance was larger then my paddling efforts but hey, at least I was outside. Now I’m eager to kayak more.
