In a travel double bill, broadcaster and author Sarah Tucker finds herself in a land of an unintentional fairy tale, taking a road trip through the Bohuslän and Västergötland regions around Gothenburg, West Sweden, discovering the life of ‘lagom’…
Classier than its loud sister Stockholm, Gothenburg has always somehow emerged as a more considered, free-spirited sibling who prefers to immerse itself in the outdoors – and the region which surrounds the city is designed for road trips. For a start, the driving experience, which in many countries is testing on the nerves, here verges on the bliss.
Roads are wide, smooth, and the speed limit is slow, but while I would ordinarily find that annoying, as a first-time driver in Sweden (in spite of plenty of other experience overseas) it’s excellent for someone who may be new to driving on what we imperious Brits call ‘the wrong side of the road’. One’s inclination is also to drive slower because this is the sort of road trip where the drive through forests, past lakes, along coastlines, needs to be taken lugubriously. To wit, they call it lagom, the art of finding balance in life, and the people I met on my road trip appear to have perfected it.
There’s a touch of whimsy about this region. My sat nav was having a field day pronouncing the Swedish names of roads, and I didn’t turn on the radio once such was the changing view and the unexpected entertainment value of my digital companion. This is a land of the unintentional fairytale, where the roads cut through extended forests of impossibly tall trees, and the only other vehicles you encounter are bicycles or tractors.
This part of West Sweden reminds me by turn of the English countryside we look back on through rose-tinted spectacles; it is spectacularly clean (not a trace of litter), the lakes shimmer like mirrors, one encounters grazing moose, and I am told there are wolves, although in my outdoor immersion I never encountered or heard one. Okay, merry England in all but fauna.
Photo by Kola Productions (courtesy of Catxalot)
My first drive took me along the coast to Tjurpannans Nature Reserve near Grebbestad, where I met Linnea from an outfit called Catxalot. Catxalot offers ‘seaweed retreats’, where she takes you foraging out into the ocean, teaching you about the magical qualities of one of nature’s best natural medicines. It includes learning how to cook with seaweed, even having saunas with seaweed.
At the end of the experience, I felt a veritable little mermaid. Linnea used to be a librarian and is now a qualified free diver, and set up this business years ago when, like many I met on my journey, she gave up corporate life for a more lagom experience. She tells me a lot of the qualities needed for that role are ideal for what she does now, namely guiding people to find the story that is right for them. It’s water therapy.
Back on dry land, I’m in Erikson Cottage, albeit more of a contemporary spin on a cottage, being something of a glass house in the middle of a forest. About a 90-minute drive from Gothenburg centre, it was originally an 18th century farm and now offers accommodation, with sourdough bakery and café, and is almost entirely sustainable, with solar panels, eco-friendly cleaning products, water from the well, and composting of all waste. Feeling very Red Riding Hood, walking through trees arriving at this very un-cottage-like cottage, it was a joy to see a dining area laid out and a hammock laced between trees for my impending arrival. The experience is impeccable.
The owners, sisters Elisabeth and Katarina, again, both left corporate jobs to start up the business just before Covid, and feared going bust before they even started. However, given the needs for isolating – and this is isolation writ large – the business thrived as it was the perfect adventure to holiday without breaking any rules. Needless to say, here, everyone has space – and gives each other space.
For all its glass structure, I feared it would be like sleeping in a greenhouse, but the sisters really did their homework and used architects to ensure each house was positioned to capitalise on the views without guests experiencing a greenhouse effect. There are three on offer; two in the forest and one by the lake, encouraging visitors to return to try out each in turn.
The forest glasshouses, of which I had one, is a much more cocooned experience, and although they offer canoes and paddleboards for the lake, the owners tell me most people just love to relax and walk on the many hikes in the woods. But, equally, one has a tendency to stay in bed and simply stare at the sky.
Understandably, its attractive to honeymooners, but I would strongly recommend it for those who enjoy travelling alone. It’s a very yogic experience, without the yoga, walking on the petrichor in the mornings, barefoot and listening to the breeze. Forest bathing eat your heart out.
The farmhouse also offers cookery courses with an original pizza oven, All food is organic, grown by the sisters, or sourced from local farmers, and brought to you prepared in small wicker baskets. Everything is sustainable, stylish, verging on the perfect film set look of surreal 1980s shampoo adverts, where even the trees look as though they have been groomed.
After this fairytale experience, I drove on to Lydde Gård, a splendid guesthouse, with surrounding annexes of such history and charm you won’t want to leave. A careful, complete renovation started in 2003, and today it is a guest house with gardens where the trees have hanging teacups, the lawnmowers have names (one was actually called Alice), and thirteen types of apple. It is also a place where, like Alice, I had an issue with doors. I mention it as it wasn’t the only place during my road trip where I was obliged to leave and enter through a window. The door to my bedroom got stuck. I tried the various locks, but to no avail, so the bathroom window it was. It’s fixed now – to my knowledge – but more’s the pity, because the window episode added to the charm of the place. I was half expecting to see a rabbit running past me clutching a pocket-watch.
The buildings, dating back to the 19th century, have a New England feel, with wooden verandas and windows that are an interior designer’s dream, and they capture the light in a way that adda a fluorescence to the landscape. Many of the rooms, each beautifully positioned and slightly whimsical, feature a huge traditional stove, some ornately painted, others plain, providing a clever heating system – who says you need modern technology to be sustainable?
This region of West Sweden, in all its bohemian wonder, is a land of creativity, home particularly to traditional glassmakers and weavers, acclaimed on a global level. Ekelund weavers in Linnevaveri – who recently struck a deal with designers William Morris – have their base at Ekelund House, where the cloth produced is of such fine quality that customers call up to complain that the linen improves with age – and still want to buy some more. What a problem to have.
Then there’s the Glasets Hus, ‘glass house’ – this time of a different sort – in Limmared, home to prestigious glassmakers, Ardagh Glass Limmared, where they make the glass for, amongst others, Absolut vodka. Again, visitors are able view glass makers at work – many of whom are visiting glass blowers who come in to make their designs. Immersed in all this creativity, awash in this landscape, bathed in light the like of which I’ve rarely seen, my lagom cup was beginning to runneth over…
Direct flights to Gothenburg from the UK are available with Norwegian starting from £44.90 one way and British Airways starting from £43 one way. More information on the area is available from www.westsweden.com and www.visitsweden.com.
Seaweed Retreats with Catxalot are from 15-16 November 2024 and 709 March 2025. For more information, please visit www.catxalot.se.
Sarah’s adventures in West Sweden continue next weekend as she encounters the Swedes’ ritual of ‘fika’…
