Gota Canal Boat Trip. Stockholm to Gothenburg

Wednesday, 9 June

An early start and a short taxi ride to the wharf to board the MS Juno, a canal boat built in 1874, for a 3night (4 day) trip via the Gota Canal and lakes to Gothenburg.

The boat departed Stockholm at 9:00 am and within half an hour we passed through the first lock, we are unsure of the total number of locks there are in total but on the canal there are 58 locks. After passing through the lock we entered Lake Malaren and an hour later passed Drottningholm Castle, the home of the Swedish Royal family.

At lunch time we entered the 135 m. long Sodertalje lock, the largest in Stockholm and when we left the lock we were in the Baltic Sea but because of the hundreds of islands it was difficult to believe that it was a sea as it just seemed like a series of lakes.

Around 4:00 pm we moored at a little town of Trosa which was established in the 14^th Century as a fishing village and in 1719 all the buildings but the village church were burnt down by the Russian invaders, who occupied the area for many years. The oldest building in the town was built in 1790 and was originally the Russian Police Station. We spent a pleasant two hours wandering around the town before returning to the boat for dinner.

Even though we hadn’t done very much during the day we returned to our cabin, as did most passengers, for an early night. When I say cabin, I use the term loosely, matchbox may be the more correct term, the door opens on to the deck with around 1 ½ m. to the railing and the cabin is a little under 2 m. deep and even less wide, (around 6 ft. x 5 ft.). Like a train sleeping compartment the top bunk folds up during the day and there is a little hand basin with a cupboard underneath and a wardrobe which is around 150 mm deep so we could just fit our two Polar Fleeces inside. Our case has to stand on the floor in front of the basin and the other one is in a store room.

To quote the “Welcome Aboard” letter, “At times life on board may seem somewhat cramped but part of the charm is being able to travel in the same way as in the 1800s. Having travelled as Hans Christian Anderson did is part of the adventure of travelling on the Gota Canal.” What the boat lacks in size it more than makes up with the food, a gourmet menu, although with only one choice per course, as the galley is on the deck below the dining room and is about the same size of our cabin. Considering the condition the chef has to work under the meals are excellent.

Thursday, 10 June

I woke at 1:00 am and realized that the ship’s engine had stopped and we were moored at a little stone jetty at little town of, Mem where on the 26^th Sept. 1832 the Goto Canal was inaugurated by King Karl XIV Johan.

Several people in Sweden had proposed building a canal across the country joining several lakes and making it possible to travel from east to west by water, a naval officer Baltzar van Platen took up the idea and the English engineer and canal builder, Thomas Telford, was invited by the Swedish King to advise on the proposed project. In 1810 the project commenced and required the digging of the canal and construction of 58 locks which allow boats to rise to 91.8 m. above sea level before descending back to the sea. The canal covers 90 km. all of which was dug by hand which explains why it is so narrow in parts, particularly the locks where the boats have only centimetres of clearance.

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A little after 4:00 am, I was aware that the boat was moving and I went out on the deck to see a crew member closing the lock gate behind us, the first of 58. During the morning we passed through many locks which allowed us to go ashore and walk beside the boat, a one stage the boat passed through five locks in less than a kilometre and at the last lock we met the MS Diana, also owned by the company, waiting in a slightly enlarged basin that would allow us to pass, the two boats were so close that the crew had to walk along the deck hanging fenders over the side to prevent the boats from scraping.

As well as passing many locks we also encountered a number of low bridges which also had to be opened. Some tilted upwards, some in one piece others in two, others slid back along the road and some pivoted on their centre The most interesting bridge was a rail bridge and while waiting a train passed over just in front of the boats bow and then the bridge tilted upwards in two parts and the overhead power lines on each section sagged down to the ground, there must have been a small gap in the middle of the lines that allowed them to separate.

After lunch we arrived at the bottom of the Carl-Johan lock staircase at Berg, the longest on the canal with seven connected locks and fifteen in total. After lunch we left the boat to walk to the Vreta Kloster Church which was established in 1110 together with a Nunnery. In the 1100s three kings were buried in this Church and their tombs are marked with golden crowns suspended over them. There is also the bronze coffin of Field Marshal Robert Douglas and also his descendants. Douglas fought for Sweden in the Thirty Year War and was rewarded with a large estate and over the years the family has contributed to the Church and town.

In the 1500s with the reformation and conversion of Sweden to the Lutheran Church, the king dissolved the convents and monasteries but allowed the nuns to remain here until the last one died in 1580. Recently excavations have revealed a Baptistery which is believed to have been built before the Church and which was used for full immersion baptisms.

Walking back to the boat we reboarded just before it entered the final lock and on leaving the lock we had to move towards the bank to pass a boat heading in the other direction. OOPS!! We’ve run aground. After a lot of revving the engine and a lot of groaning and scraping of the boat we were refloated and continued on our quiet way.

Shortly after running aground we came to a sharp bend in the canal known as “Helmsman’s Horror and built on a little spit on the bend was an elevated building, like a large gazebo, which was built in 1872. We soon found out how the bend got its name, as while trying to negotiate the bend we had the bow against one bank and the stern against the other and the keel had grounded again. It took about twenty minutes and a lot of forward and reverse jiggling to finally negotiate the bend and about 200 m. on we came to a lock which is one of two hand operated locks on the canal. At this stage we were running three hours behind on our schedule and our planned visit to a museum at Motala, our overnight stop was cancelled as we weren’t going to arrive until after midnight.

During the day the canal passed of two major roads on an aqueduct, one built in 1970 and the other in 1993. It was quite strange to sit in the boat and watch cars pass underneath.

Friday, 11 June

We left Motola at around 5:30 am and shortly after leaving we entered Lake Vattern, Sweden’s second largest lake, we were now 89 m. above sea level.

On a bank of the lake is Karlsborg Fortress, the construction was initiated by Balzar von Platen in 1819 to counter the threat from the Russians, construction was expected to take ten years but when it was finished ninety years later modern weapons had rendered it useless. We entered the fortress and were taken for a tour through the lower gun emplacement which has a very realistic sound and light show simulating an attack on the fortress, even to the floor shaking when a “shell hit the wall”. Further on we were taken through the old officers quarters, set up as they were a hundred years ago, one of the conditions of having quarters in the fortress was that they had to have a cannon in their living room and their wife was responsible for its maintenance. It must have been a talking point in those days.

Leaving the lake we re-entered the canal and arriving at the lock at Forsvik we were greeted by members of the Kindbom family with some religious songs and messages, the family patriarch commenced his preaching in 1930 and his family have continued the tradition. We soon entered a narrow section of the canal passing through woods and in 1930-33 a new section had been dug out to replace a sharp bend but we still had to put mooring ropes around a bollard on the bank to help us swing around the bend. Beside the unused portion of the canal is an obelisk marking the highest point in the canal, 91.5 m. above sea level. From this part of the canal we entered a small lake and later in summer it must be a beautiful sight as all around the shore it is lined with yellow flowered water lilies. Back in the canal we came to a second hand operated lock which marked the commencement of our down hill travel to Gothenburg.

Along the canal we passed a narrow section with a tiny hand operated ferry, the Lina, carrying people across, a distance of about 10 m. and further along the canal was another railway bridge and we had to wait for a train to pass over before it could be opened.

At Hajstorp there was a series of four locks so we went ashore and walked 1 ½ km to the last lock and had to wait for half an hour for the boat to catch up. After the Captain’s dinner we arrived at a series of eight locks and went ashore to visit a museum which contained a lot of memorabilia from the canal construction, maps, plans and tools and the interiors from several old ships. It took 58,000 people to dig the canal by hand using metal tipped wooden shovels and wheel barrows.

After leaving Sjotorp we entered Lake Vanern, Sweden’s largest lake which is 130 m. deep and the third largest lake in Europe after Russia’s Ladoga and Onega which we travelled through on our Russian cruise. We were to cruise through this lake overnight and were due to arrive at the other side around 7:00 am. During the night we encountered strong winds and large waves and at times the boat was rocking so much, I thought I was going to fall out of my bunk. At 4:00 am there was water washing along the deck outside our cabin door and at breakfast several people didn’t make an appearance.

Saturday, 12 June

At Trollhattan we went ashore to visit the canal museum but the person who was to open it didn’t turn up so we walked to see the first two sets of locks which have since been replaced by a third. The first set were built in 1796 to 1800 long before the canal construction started and were blasted through solid rock, when they opened they were referred to as the 8^th wonder of the world. During their construction there was a lot of interference and interruption by the locals who earned their living transporting good to and from the lake by horse drawn wagons. When the canal opened a second set of wider locks were built in 1844 but it still took three hours to travel through all the locks and it 1916 a third set of four locks were built which were deeper and larger with an overall drop of 32 m. this allowed boats to pass through in a much shorter time.

Back on board for an early lunch and we entered a river for our final run into Gothenburg docking on time at 2:30 pm after a magnificent trip through some of the greenest farmland we have ever seen. A short, but expensive, taxi trip brought us to our hostel and after we checked in we realized that we had left our binoculars in our cabin so we had to walk to a tram and travel back into the city centre and walk to the boat, in the rain to retrieve them.

To ensure that we didn’t have withdrawal symptoms our room in the hostel is equipped with bunks, so I still have to climb a ladder to get into bed.