Albrektsunds kanal, Marstrand and Carlsten
Short summary: Marstrand is certainly worth a visit, and it's certainly worth spending more time there than what we did this time. It's a charming place, it's also highly recommended to do some hiking in the nature on the island, as well as a proper visit to the fortress. If one wants to shed some money, there are also quite some nice restaurants (at least I belive they are nice - never tried dining out on Marstrand) and even some shops there.
Marstrand was a big Norwegian city, probably established in 1291. It would probably still be a Norwegian city if it wasn't for greedy Danish kings demanding too much in the Helsingør Sound Dues, which I covered in a previous post. In 1658 the Swedes took over. The iconic fortress was built by the Swedes, but the fortress has briefly been taken over twice by Danish/Norwegian troops (and yielded back to Sweden after negotiations).
By car the distance Oslo-Gothenburg is covered by the road E6, but sailors also refer to the most common sailing route as "E6". This "E6" passes between the Marstrand island and the Koön island. Koön has a road connection by bridges and other islands - those bridges are too low for me, but if not having a mast, it's possible to pass closer to the mainland. The distance from Gothenburg was covered in the late night, so no photos taken due to the darkness - but we threw anchor and slept before Marstrand. "E6" passes through many channels, Albrektsunds kanal is the first one - most of those channels are really best to go while it's daylight, it can be very challenging to do them in the darkness.
I was a bit slow getting up the camera when entering the channel ... but here we go:
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Here the iconic fortress is visible
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The black birds, "skarv" ...
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To the starboard is the Koön island, it is part of the Marstrand town, and it has a road connection. I've only been there once ... at my first visit to Marstrand, we came by car and visited Shtandart (Shtandart: my previous post / wikipedia / own home page) there. We parked there, and used the cable ferry to get to Marstrand. Later we used the cable ferry to visit the supermarket at Koön. There is a kiosk and a small food shop at Marstrand, but it's not possible to find a good selection of food for nice prices at Marstrand island.
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To the port, Marstrand.
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It said on a poster that long side mooring wasn't allowed, though there were already two boats staying long side and enough space for me to stay long side between them. There are ropes provided, you can see the ropes attached on every connection on the platform. The ropes are connected to some moorings - on the photo you can see the taut rope going from the mooring to my aft starboard cleat, and then the rope is continuing with some slack into the water and up to the platform. I was alone at the wheel, my first plan was to first go long side and then eventually use the rope to move the boat into an allowed configuration. However, with the wind direction it was quite difficult to moore up with the long side. Eventually I got help from my son, so I could jump in land, attach one rope and let the boat hang by the wind until I could fix the other rope. I'm quite happy that I managed to moore up like this, it's a bit outside my comfort zone as I usually put the boat long side towards the quay.
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The cable ferries - one is going frequently forth and back, the other is probably a stand-by in case the regular one has a breakdown. The ferry goes 24/7, but between 00:00 and 05:00 it only goes twice an hour, and only if there is a demand for it - there is a push-button to indicate demand.
The cable ferry do take cars, but I wonder if one needs a special permit, or maybe it's quite expensive - at least there are very few cars on the Marstrand island. I like that; the fewer cars the better.
There is a nice playground on Marstrand, this ship is one of the installations there.
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I thought it probably was a one-off, but no ... this installation is mass-fabricated. If all playground items should be certified, it may be hard to create truely unique playground installations.
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The church is right above the playground.
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There is a sign telling that one has to go (drive?) to the right to get to Carlsten, but this hill looks much more inviting
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Eventually the "road" is no road anymore, but I still think this is the best way to the fortress.
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Here we are ... on a small moat and a bridge across it.
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We are now in one of the outermost courts. There is again a sign urging us to go right to get properly inside the fort. We still ignore it.
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It looks like it's possible to get in this way ... yes, it probably is possible, for someone that is a bit better than us at climbing.
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We just continued straigth, and got completely at the outside of the fortress.
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Very nice view. I was sort of trying to do a panorama ... but most of the photos got very dark (focus on the bright sky rather than the land). Those shots got nice though ...
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We climbed up ... seems like it's possible to enter the fortress this way. Which I think is a bit weird, one of the characteristics of a fortress is that it should be hard to enter (except through the gate). Then again, the fortress was defeated twice, perhaps the intruders came this way? Oh, and that ugly thing, I can only guess it's an elevator for wheelchair users ...
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Gate 13 and 14. We decided not to try to break in here.
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This is the main entrance to the inner yards. There was a sign saying that they would open at 11, and that it costs money. We came there at 10, and we didn't really have the time to do more sightseeing anyway.
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This is the street we "should" have followed to get to the fortress.
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View towards Koön
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Here is Nisse, the spare cablecar ferry
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And here is Lasse-Maja. It's named after a criminal that enjoyed wearing female clothes; he eventually became the most famous prisoner at Carlsten.
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It's not much common to see Russian vessels in Sweden. It's certainly a long distance to Moscow.
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Sources
Wikipedia articles
- Carlsten fortress: Swedish / English (more languages available)
- Marstrand: Swedish / English (more languages available)
- Lasse-Maja: Swedish / English / Russian / German
Other sources
- Albrektsunds kanal, kanaler.arnholm.nu (Swedish)
Selected photos available in original quality on IPFS QmVpuUnxrAwfaahLpyBYdqasRwX2vNuqQXKV51qLrQQ425. All photos taken available in original quality on IPFS QmVQ5xVfG8PgzYSPBwZ1ZMfuJz3XxMoeRAAReD4SjZ98ub. The CC BY-SA 4.0 license applies on both my photos and the article
Hiya, just swinging by to let you know that this post made the Honorable mentions list in today's Travel Digest #316. Please drop by to check out all the rest of today's great posts and consider upvoting the Travel Digest if you like what we're doing.
Marstrand looks like a lovely place to visit @tobixen and Carlsten fortress seems very interesting. It must help having such gorgeous weather. 😊
We had tailwind most of the way, how gorgeous isn't that :-)
I have no idea @tobixen I'm not very good at telling from which direction the wind is blowing at the best of times. 😂
I'm too much focused on the wind aspect those days, I check only the prognosis for the wind direction and wind speed, I forget to check if it will be sunny or rainy :-) Weather was partly overcast, so it was nice indeed.
I actually forgot, in the morning there was still not so much wind, so we had to go by engine. It can clearly be seen on the 10:38:42, where some small sailing boat is getting very little wind in its sails. So, the weather was gorgeous for doing hikes on Marstrand, but not so gorgeous for sailing :-)
And that was exactly was I was thinking about when I saw your photographs @tobixen. 😁
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Espectacular... despite too long!!!!
Indeed ... I should probably work a bit more on that, select only the few best photos and keep the writing a bit shorter too.
Nice detailed article about Marstrand. The pictures quality are exceptional. Really the article is worth of reading. Thanks for sharing.
Hey tobixen, Marstrand looks a beautiful town to visit. I think that reading you post and looking at your photos is the only way I will see this place.
Well, if you ever decide to do a European trip ...
I think people are too obsessed with the capitals. Coming from Australia to see Europe, what would one do? Probably put up a bucket list of capitals, spend some few days in each and then go home? I always used to say that one hasn't really seen Norway if all one has done is visiting Oslo ... well, my perspective may have changed a bit after moving to Oslo, but still - I'd still say, to get the gist of Norway, Oslo is one of the last places to visit!
When living in the far north of Norway, we had home hospitality visitors from Singapore once ... no, actually twice, their first trip was so great they decided to come back again! They had a short new year holidays and wanted to see something exotic - and I'm quite sure they did the right thing!
... but I'm digressing again. :-)
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