Sweden 2016 - Part II - Kayaking in Dalsland

Kayaking is a wonderful way to discover the most beautiful places. Whether on lakes, on rivers, or even on the sea, it’s a new viewpoint, a new perspective compared for example to hiking. I love the feeling of being so close to the water and taking advantage of the waves, the wind and the currents. But I won't go into detail here as I am not an expert in kayaking. You can usually rent kayaks without ever having spent a minute in one before, which is a nice idea in case you just want to try it out for an hour or two. You'll get a short rundown on safety and handling before setting off. If you plan to do a longer tour or if you'd like to try sea kayaking I'd strongly recommend to either go with a guide or do a course first.
Monsieur and me first tried kayaking a few years ago in Germany and we loved it right away. We did a few day tours on a nearby lake (if you ever happen to be in Switzerland, in our case it's Lake Biel, I can recommend Globepaddler for renting kayaks and equipment), and tried sea kayaking in France (more about it in my post about Morbihan). When we started planning to do a longer tour in Sweden, we decided to do a refresher course including safety techniques, which was fun but also gave us the confidence needed to stay out there for four days, kayaking from campsite to campsite.

So, on a beautiful afternoon in July after having travelled across Sweden, we collected our equipment at Bootshaus in Bengtsfors, loaded everything we'd need for the next three days into our two yellow kayaks and off we went!

Ready for take off - at Bootshaus in Bengtsfors

I tried to mark the stops of our tour on another Tripline map but found out that this doesn't make much sense - it shows the route between two places on land which is no use as we travelled on water. But if you want to follow the route you can find all campsites and locks I mention on this map by DANO or in the map provider of your choice using the coordinates.

We paddled along Lake Lelången, the water beyond our yellow kayaks, the blue sky above us, it was like a dream. A few impressions from this first day of our tour:

In the evening we made camp at Taraldsön campsite (DANO campsite 61, LAT: 59.15273 LNG: 12.14775).

The DANO campsites usually have a wind shelter (not all of them though), toilets (yes!), fire pits and a few spots to put up tents. There are no other facilities, and some campsites are quite far away from the next village.

On the next day we set off early and arrived at the water mouth leading to Gustavsfors around noon.

Gustavsfors was our first lock on the tour, and while we had actually passed small locks when we tried kayaking for the first time in Germany, we had not yet encountered a big lock like this one. Quite the challenge! but not because passing a lock in a kayak is difficult as such, but because we met a group of very drunk Belgians in canoes. Apparently it was their first big lock, too. Small boats are always required to yield to bigger boats and wait - or you can try your luck by squeezing into the lock besides the big boats, holding on to ropes on the sides of the lock. The Belgians did so standing up in their canoes, rope in one, bottle in the other hand and obviously had the time of their lives while the rest of us tried not to capsize when their swaying canoes hit our boats. We made it out of the lock safely, and the next part of the tour turned out to be one of the most beautiful.

Me having lunch after passing Gustavsfors.

We entered Västra Silen, our next lake, and paddled along it, enjoying the view on Vårviks Kyrka, a church situated on a small peninsula, and finally arriving at our second campsite at Skifors (DANO campsite 55, LAT: 59.13872 LNG: 12.24624)

Paddling towards Vårviks Kyrka.

Nightfall at Skifors - lake Svärdlång waiting for us!

We woke up to a beautiful morning, enjoyed our breakfast and coffee, and started into the third day of our tour - not yet knowing it would be annoying, exhausting, even dangerous.

Good morning, Skifors!

But first, we paddled along Lake Svärdlång - incredibly beautiful, calm and peaceful.

In the afternoon, we arrived at Skåpafors - we knew we would have to portage our kayaks there, as the next lake, Laxsjön, was not directly conntected to Svärdlång. We had of course seen this on our maps, but we were not prepared for what waited for us at Skåpafors. The distance between the place where we left lake Svärdlång and the place where we could put our boats into the water of Laxsjön was about 1.5 km, and the rocky path led steeply downwards. Oh well. I was SO, SO angry at the people at Bootshaus because they hadn't told us about this even though we had mentioned to them that we planned to pass Skåpafors.
So - usually, if you are on a tour with kayaks and you already know in advance that you'll need to portage your boats over a certain distance, you take little carts with you. We didn't have them as we had no idea our portage distance in any of the relevant places would be more than 100 metres. Now we were stuck with two kayaks, each weighing about 25 kg without luggage. Of course you can carry this weight with two adults, even including the luggage, but for 1.5 km? We would've emptied the boats, transporting the luggage and the kayaks separately, walking up and down the steep path four times, always risking that our material or even the kayaks might be stolen while we were away. Phew. Not a good plan, but we didn't really have a choice - there were no other people in sight who could've helped, so we decided to do what we had to - when we saw a group of canoes approaching. Obviously, they had known what to expect at Skåpafors and had brought portage carts! We asked them if we could borrow one, and they agreed and even helped us transporting our equipment to the access on the next lake - Laxsjön.

We were happy to continue our tour without having to portage without a cart. We paddled onwards, enjoying the weather. But then a wind came up, there were more and more little waves, and we still had to cross Laxsjön to reach our campsite, Baldersnäs, which is situated on the tip of a peninsula (DANO campsite 47, LAT: 58.97444 LNG: 12.29056).
Soon, the waves grew, some of them swashing over our kayaks. It became harder to paddle, the waves played with our boats, it felt like for every metre forward the water and the wind sent us two metres backward. But we didn't have a choice as the weather had only changed when we were already halfway over Laxsjön - going back would have been just as bad. So we fought our way through the waves and made it to the shore without capsizing. Later in the evening, the sky cleared up and while the wind still made waves, the lake looked as if it had never tried to keep us from reaching the campsite :)

We had a beautiful last evening in Baldersnäs. The next day would bring us an unexpected chance to have a coffee - and seven locks.

In the morning, we crossed Laxsjön again and soon arrived at the first lock. Of course it was closed and we had to wait until a bigger ship had passed. We asked the guy at the lock how long it would take and he said we'd have to wait about 20 minutes. Unfortunately, there was a paper mill right next to the lock - and honestly, the smell was horrible. So - we had to wait and endure it. A German couple in a canoe had alrealy opened a beer, and so Monsieur asked me if I'd like a coffee. Great idea! At home we have several different ways of making coffee, but on the road and camping we always have a Bialetti Moka Pot with us. Together with a small camping gas cooker, it makes a wonderful and quick coffee machine. Monsieur climbed out of his kayak unto the jetty and installed the cooker, a few minutes later I had a steaming cup of coffee in my hand. One of my best memories of this tour!

Waiting for the bigger ships to pass the lock at Billingsfors.

Before we reached Bengtsfors again, we had to pass six more locks on this day. Arriving in Bengtsfors, we wanted to enjoy the last hours of our tour, so we found a nice picknick spot at the lake and had lunch and coffee with a wonderful view before returning to Bootshaus. The first week of our holidays in Sweden was over, and we already had collected so many new impressions and moments we would never forget.

Looking back on the tour now, I long to do something like this again one day - but right now this is not an option. Little Gu can't swim yet and there's not even life jackets for kids his size, so we probably have to wait a few years until we can take him on his first tour in a kayak. But I'm looking forward to sharing this wonderful experience with him one day.