Euro Day 38 - If it's easy, it's not worth doing

Wednesday, 31 July 2019

In the early days of planning this holiday I had Stockholm's Archipelago on my wish list. As we had this 3 day gap before needing to be in Switzerland, and with my friend Jackie and her son Ben also keen to join us, this was the perfect opportunity to go. So not much under a year ago Jackie and I trawled AirBNB looking for a big enough place that we could stay for 3 nights. There weren't many options (It's peak season so most of the locals are using their holiday houses), but we eventually found something that looked good on an island called Stora Aspön. Turns out that was the easy part.

The hard part was getting here. In fact it couldn't have been much harder! When I sat down late last week to work out the logistics, it was immediately apparent that it was going to be a challenge!

Firstly, it's a 2 hour ferry ride from Stockholm to get to an island nearby, then a 10 minute water taxi to get to this island.

Secondly, the ferry left at 10am, and not again until 6pm. So we REALLY wanted to be on the 10am ferry or we'd be stuck in Stockholm with all our gear for 8 hours!

Thirdly, we could only return our campervan between 8am & 10am, which sounds fine, but when you consider that the 'Stockholm' depot is actually a 45 minute car drive from Stockholm (or over 2 hours door to door on public transport), things start to get really tricky.

Fourthly, we had to bring ALL our food for 3 days to the island. It's pretty small so there's certainly no shop. That meant planning and shopping and almost completely packing everything in the last night of our van.

Then yesterday we got an extra degree of difficulty as we tried to pre-book the water taxi (as we had been instructed to do), none of four we tried were available. Which left us rather stuck.

In the end I rang the house owner and asked us her to help us find a way to get there. Thankfully she organised us a trip with a different company we didn't know about so that part was sorted. The next challenge was simply making it to the ferry on time.

As I mentioned yesterday, we parked the van for the night 10 minutes away from the drop-off point. We still had to get up at 6am to do the final packing and cleaning of the van, but we were able to drive through the gates at 8am to complete the 20 minute drop-off procedure. We'd organised the campervan people to shuttle us to the nearest train station (thereby avoiding 2 bus trips and a 20 minute walk), which they agreed to do (for a fee) - so that meant we could get the one and only train which would give us a chance of making it. And thankfully it was running on time, so with all our gear plus 3 very heavy hiking backpacks stuffed full of food, we negotiated the 40 minute train trip then transfer to the light rail then 400 metre walk and we made it to the boarding queue where Jackie and Ben were already waiting with ten minutes to spare! What a miracle.

Compared to the Paris Metro, it was pretty easy (and empty), and Stockholm has lots of cool art on the subway stations.

The ferry trip was really lovely. The very comfortable boat wound its way north through the archipelago past cute small and medium sized islands with delightful looking holiday houses, flags and forests.

The pickup by the water taxi from the jetty was uneventful, the drop-off was a bit more hairy. At first we went to the wrong bay on the wrong island (Lilla Aspön)... almost leading to a three day stay camped in our luggage. But our taxi-boat driver was very good-natured and after confirming the drop-off point, we bounced our way through the short chop spraying Ben and Jon and the bags thoroughly.

Then, due to the unseasonally high winds and waves it was too difficult to land at the public jetty when we reached the right bay at the right island. In the end we had to jump off onto a private jetty and scamper through their property before walking onwards in the direction of our house. We still hadn't seen the house yet, so having farewelled the taxi-boat driver with a promise to return at 1 o'clock Friday we were a little nervous that we were now on our own without a certain home. Even when the house came into sight we weren't convinced we'd made it until we found the key and opened the door.

So against all odds, we made it! As the shuttle driver said to us on the way to the train station, if it's easy, it's not worth doing!

We do still have the small matter of getting back to Stockholm, but for now, we're here, and we're relaxed. Mostly we chilled for the rest of today, although Jackie and I did go for a short walk which pretty much covered the rest of the island.