We sailed the almost 30NM from Askersund to Karlsborg in one hit, hoping to spend a couple of days exploring the town. I was especially keen to visit Karlsborg Fortress, which was built in 1819 to serve as an alternative national capital in the event of a war. The brochures we had seen of the fortress were very impressive. In addition, we had been having a running joke about the name for several days. I had accidentally mispronounced the word fästning (fortress) as fästing (tick), so after Lars-Göran picked himself up from the floor and wiped tears of laughter from his eyes, he had been on the lookout for this giant insect, warning me that we had better keep a close eye on Lambi as she is prone to pick up ticks. Will I ever learn to pronounce Swedish flawlessly, I wonder?

The outer guest harbour was again full of local boats taking the opportunity of free mooring in the quiet pre-season, so we tied up as best we could and walked along the canal to see if things were better in the other guest harbour beyond the bridge. That was also full of freeloaders and by now we were rather irritated. It is all very well for the canal company to wax lyrical about the number of guest harbours they have and the fact that we can stay there for free if we pay the canal fee, when in fact there is never any room anywhere for us to stay. We noticed a Danish boat moored there and he told us that he was heading out at the 8am bridge opening, so we made up our mind to come in and moor in his spot the next morning, which we did.




The guest harbour was actually quite a long walk from the fortress - a good 3 or 4 kilometers. We took a walk around the town on the following day and were both frankly appalled at the place. I can honestly say that this is the worst town I have ever been in. The car is king in this town and it does not cater well for pedestrians. A major highway passed straight through the town and day and night, heavily laden timber trucks and semitrailers roared through the town at top speed. It was noisy and quite scary. In addition, being a country town, there were the usual gangs of young men in hotted up cars cruising everywhere with their stereo systems turned up to full volume.

We had thought to stick to the walkways and footpaths, but that was also a joke. As there was so much heavy traffic on the road, the cyclists and those with mopeds used the footpaths as well. I was constantly weaving out of the way of kamikaze cyclists riding at breakneck speed and gangs of teenagers on mopeds using the walkways as a racetracks. I found it very stressful - so much so that we decided to skip the whole town and early the next morning we made our way upstream to wait the night at the first lock at Forsvik, which was a quiet, peaceful and very pretty little town.




We knew by now that the stretch from Karlsborg to Toreboda would begin at 8am in Karlsborg, so we would not have to be ready for locking until the other boats in the convoy arrived here at 9am. We walked up to the lock to take a look at what we will face in the morning. It all looks so peaceful and calm in the early evening light.




I was rather amused to see the bridge in the middle of the lock. This is the oldest lock in the whole canal, having been built in 1810. The bridge, which was part of the main road is also the oldest iron bridge in Sweden. It is permanently open these days, having been replaced by another bridge on the other side of the lock. I did wonder whose not so bright idea it was to construct a bridge in the middle of the lock. When boats were negotiating the lock, the bridge would need to be kept open for the 15 or so minutes it took to lock up or down - what an inconvenience to the road and pedestrian traffic!

The old lock keeper's cottage is now a pretty, leafy café (sadly closed this early in the season). It must be lovely to sit here in the garden on a summer's day watching the passing traffic up and down stream.




Another boat has joined us this evening, so we will try and see if we can lock up together early so we can get underway and motor along at a slower pace to the next bridge at Brosundet. I'd like to enjoy it all at a slower pace, especially as I have heard that this section of the canal is really pretty.