Day 5, The Day We Got In Sync!

We woke up quite late this morning; it was lovely to have a bit of a lie in. We needed a morning to catch up on some housekeeping and get ourselves straight after 4 days on the road. We managed to wash some clothes and had tofu wraps for lunch, then headed over to the kayak cabin less than 100m away.

Kayaking around the Stockholm archipelago was something we had definitely planned on doing, and after checking the weather today was the perfect day to do it, as it was forecast at about 25 degrees, and cooler for tomorrow. We booked a 4 hour paddle in a double kayak, as we intended kayaking around our island of Langholmen and the next, larger island of Kungsholmen, and back along the route we had walked last night. We were told it was about a 3 hour paddle.

After 2 minutes of instruction and setting up with our life vests and dry bags, we were heading into the kayaks. I always hate this part! We were soon off, and true to our relationship we spent 10 minutes bickering before we finally got into sync with our strokes. I was in the front, and Lyn in the back, so he steered, although the rudder was next to useless. The only kayaking experience we had had before was a weekend sea kayaking around the Pembrokeshire Coast a few years back, so it took a little while to feel comfortable, but we were soon paddling along quite happily.

We had to navigate round our little island, taking in all the sights of Stockholm in the summer, which included sunbathing Swedes basking in the lovely weather. It also included watching a naked man getting out of the water from behind; not a pretty sight when he bent over!

It was then time to cross the busy water channel to go between islands. This is where we caught the waves of one of the ferries, which was pretty hairy for a few seconds, and I had a good soaking! We made it to the other side and decided we could paddle in sync when we needed to. We then started to circumnavigate Kungsholmen, along with loads of other water craft; everything from ferries, speed boats, rowing boats, kayaks and SUPS. It was amazing to see the places where the Swedes like to hang out in the summer; they were everywhere; from grassy banks near the water, to balanced on rocks etc. They are definitely beautiful people ( unlike us!) ; they seem to be constantly active; whether sailing, swimming, cycling or running.

We entered the main canal which was quite narrow and very busy, so it was hard to navigate and keep moving forward. At one point we were shouted at from behind as we were holding up a speedboat that wanted to pass us! Towards the bottom of the canal there were massive new buildings with amazing architecture. Loads of investment there. We exited next to one of our favourite buildings from our walk last night. We had assumed it was a mosque, with it’s golden domes, but it turned out to be Stockholm City Hall.

We then crossed the wide ferry channel to paddle back up to our island and suffered with the wind and the current for the last mile or so as we were constantly pushed to the right. We ended up paddling with our right oar only to try and keep straight. We entered the final canal, Palsundet, back at our island, where the water was so amazingly calm in contrast. Had we not done 6.5 miles in 2 hours 25 minutes it would have been gorgeous to have stayed longer and chill, but our backs, arms and legs were killing. When we got out of our kayak it took a while to get our legs to work again! Luckily it was just a minutes walk back to our van and a hot shower, then a medicinal drink to help the pain, before a pasta/pesto meal for dinner. Looking forward to bed tonight!