Sweden: Vanersborg to Trollhattan by Bike

Swedish Graffiti

 So we jumped on our bikes again and headed through downtown. But at the bridge we arrived on we turned left and headed down the other side of the canal, back towards the river. A different way home than I took on my initial reconnaisance sounded fun. And that way Ann got the excitement of finding a new way too.

Old Swedish Farm Estate

As we tooled along the river, I noted not for the first time the restraint of Swedish graffiti. In the US it tends to be anywhere, but here it seemed restricted to public utility structures almost exclusively. Not on bridges, not on trains, not on factories. Just utility boxes. Weird, but I approve.

Past more fields and factories we found this old estate house (now apartments). Maybe Sweden wasn't always so egalitarian. The bike path went right down the driveway, past the car ports, and returned to the fields. More evidence of the Swedish sense of public space. We passed a class on a field trip walking the path (well, some were laying in it and seemed a bit taken aback to have bikers bearing down on them, but they hopped up quickly, smiling shyly and waved).

Small Houses in a Swedish Suburb

We left the fields and rode on around the back side of a smaller, plainer suburb, then back to the river. Here you could see that the local bedrock had been blasted to make the river a  navigable canal, and the path gained a few short hills in what was an otherwise very flat ride. Good thing, as the hotel bike was a very heavy single speed.

As the channel widened we saw signal lights and what appeared to be a low bridge, but as we approached, it resolved into a lock on the canal with a roadway across the top of the gates, kind of like a horizontal swing bridge. Neat! Never seen that before.

Locks on the Gota Alv below Vanersborg

We rode past evidence of another of Sweden's big industries, logging. Here a giant pile of pine logs waited along the narrow paved road and farmer's field. I would have liked to have seen the harvesting and equipment to compare to what I see back home in the Keweenaw. At least one of the major harvesting systems used in our area is manufactured in Finland. I wonder what the Swede's use?

Evidence of Logging

And then we passed the golf course again and were retracing our path to Trollhattan. Along the highway the car's headlights were on as we cruised along the bike path and back to our cozy hotel on the waterfront. What a great day out.

Back to the Scandic Hotel at Dusk