Niklas removed the canopy cover from his beautiful SportStar. The aircraft was prepared, and after the pre-flight check we took off from his private grass airstrip near Laholm in Halland county of Sweden.
It was early morning, and the air was smooth. We flew over the mainland, and enjoyed the view over those endless Swedish forests with deep-blue lakes:
Lilla Edets Sluss is the oldest lock in Sweden and is located on the west side of the Göta river in the village of Lilla Edet in Västra Götaland county:
Work on the lock in Lilla Edet was started in the 1580’s after a proposal from King Johan III of Sweden, and it was in use since 1607. The lock was damaged several times during the wars with Denmark, and later rebuilt. At the old lock there is a memorial stone that was erected in 1930 in memory of the 47 soldiers from Västgöta-Dal’s regiment. They drowned after putting out the devastating fire in Lilla Edet on the 29th August 1830.
Our next sightseeing point was Uddevallabron, a 1712 metres long cable-stayed bridge that was open for traffic in 2000:
There is a problem with ice sticking to the cables in the winter, which can fall onto cars. The bridge has to be closed a few times per year due to this reason. There is an alternative road though.
Soon Niklas and I were close to our destination – Fjällbacka airfield:
The yellow arrow on the photo below points at Veddö nature reserve. It was our plan to go hiking there:
There was nobody at the airfield when we landed. Niklas filled in his logbooks:
And we headed on the road. The Veddö archipelago consists of Veddö and several surrounding islands together with water areas. The nature of Veddö was very rich – pine trees, beaches and bathing cliffs, pastures with animals, shell gravel banks, heather heaths.
The views were spectacular, and we often stopped to admire them and to take lots of pictures.
You can walk for about 3 km around Veddö with the ocean by your side throughout most of the walk.
There are several lovely beaches, but most of them have lots of stones and shells of molluscs and oysters.
I found a gigantic oyster shell I brought with me home, to my collection of rocks, shells and fossiles from different places.
Getting into the water was so blissful on that hot +30C summer day:
We rounded up our hike in the harbour – it was quite big, with many boats:
Niklas and I were happy we did that hike – it was such a beautiful place! One could easily spend a couple of days there, just wandering around…
