One major difference was the inclusion of several lakes along the route, linked by the canals. The canal system goes from Göteborg on the west coast to Söderköping, south of Stockholm. The entire trip takes 6 days, but the canal company has several shorter options. This year, they added a 2-night, 3-day cruise from Mariestad to Norsholm. There were only a few dates to choose from, but one of them coincided nicely with a planned visit with friends Ami and Gus in Östergötland, so the four of us decided to try it.
We took the boat Wilhelm Tham, built in 1911-12. Anyone interested in more details can check here: http://www.gotacanal.se/en/canalboats/wilhelm-tham/
The Boat Itself:
M/S Wilhelm Tham at the dock in Mariestad.
The dining room on the main deck looks fairly spacious, but is actually quite cosy when full of people!
Other public spaces included an open-air “lounge” at the back of the upper deck, where most people spent a great deal of their time watching the scenery go by, and a small “library” at the front of the main deck.
The sleeping cabins were….more than cosy. Bunks are 175 cm (5’7”) long…they suggest if you are taller than that, you let them know ahead of time. Not sure what they could do about it, though. There is almost enough room for two people to pass each other, but we found it best to get dressed one at a time. There are hooks for hanging jackets and hats, a very slim “closet” on the right (holds about 3 shirts before it won’t stay closed), and the sort of cubical cabinet at the back opens up into a sink, with hot and cold running water, plus a bit of storage space. Don’t bring any more luggage than will fit under the bottom bunk!
Locks:
Being a canal, there were lots of locks that served to raise the boats to the levels of the various lakes we crossed. The most common were single locks, where the boat is lifted or lowered into another channel, and double locks, where there are two locks together and the boat goes directly from one to the next.
When the “paddles” or trapdoors in the lock gates were opened, the water force could be pretty strong. Water was let out at varying rates, depending if the boat was locking up or locking down. When locking up, the water came into the lock where the boat was, and could damage either the boat or the lock itself, if the boat got to banging around. So going up took about twice as long as going down….twenty or so minutes per lock on the way up.
Watching this process was a favorite activity of the passengers, as there isn’t a lot of extra room in the locks, so the Captain and crew were kept quite busy and there was a lot going on. The locks are partly automated, operated by a lock-master in yellow shirt and black shorts, plus a wave and a smile! Other duties were handled by the deck and cabin crew…they got a good workout hauling ropes around, while the Captain kept the boat in place using electroning controls on either side of the wheel-house. In the top right photo, Anita is showing the Captain how much farther in he can go. The next photo is one of the lock-masters standing out on the lock gate, making sure it doesn’t hit the boat.
And then there were a couple of lock staircases…3-7 locks all in a row. Here’s the 7-lock staircase at Berg—even though it’s faster going down, it still took over an hour to clear all the locks:
Passengers weren’t the only observers….most locks had little gatherings of passers-by. At one lock in particular, we were met by a group with a several-generations-long tradition of greeting all the Göta Kanal Company boats with songs and a bouquet!
Bridges:
Besides locks, there were many bridges to be passed. Too many bridges, in the opinion of the Captain, but there they were. All of them had to be moved in some way, in order for the boat to pass. All caused some delay to land-based traffic…although not to trains. Trains had right-of-way over boats, passenger boats over cars. Not sure about private boats, although cars sometimes had to wait for them as well.
There were several types of mechanisms used on bridges. Most common was that part of the roadbed slides or rolls over the other side:
Also fairly common were swing bridges, where the bridge rotates so as to parallel the canal:
And there were a few lift bridges as well.
No matter the mechanism, this was a common sight. This is the E-18 highway, comparable to a major state highway in the US. Drivers probably don’t find the boats to be charming….
The most complex was a railway lift bridge for which we had waited 20 minutes while four trains went by in various directions. It’s complicated because it’s an electric rail system, so the overhead power lines have to split and then join back together when the bridge is in place again. Lars explains: At one end of this railroad bridge there are two sets of uprights (seen in left picture), each with its transverse bar on top. These facilitate disconnecting and reconnecting the electrical power lines used by trains. Both transverse bars have two short vertical bars (right picture). These short vertical bars are connected at the bottom by short horizontal pieces of metal that are the actual switches. When bridge is closed these pieces of metal are firmly pressed against each other, closing the switch. The switches disconnect when the bridge rises – an elegant solution.
Canal Building:
Göta Kanal is partly a route across large lakes, such as Vänern and Vättern, partly dug and/or blasted. The part of Göta Kanal we traversed is several 10s of meters higher in its central part, where solid rock extends to the surface and the channel had to be blasted. Some of the lakes it traverses in this higher area are shallow with rocky bottoms—where it was also necessary to blast a channel across the lake. These channels across shallow lakes are marked on one side by a stone wall and by the usual signs on the other. The wide pictures below show how the blasted-out channel is marked. The next two show parts of the stone wall where the channel transitions from lake into adjacent areas. Note that this part of the canal is quite narrow. The boat is a really tight fit in some places, and the water-level is low this year, often resulting in solid thumps as rocks and steel hull collided.
Scenery:
And of course, a lot of the time we were just watching the scenery pass by. We had great luck with the weather…sunny days and a slight breeze from the movement of the boat at 5-6 knots. There were several chances to step off and walk along the canal, as well; hence the shots from land.
Fiskegjuse (osprey) chicks:
At the lower end of locks at Berg, there is a “transparent” statue. As Lars was photographing it, he noticed that is was changing. This 9-picture sequence shows how the singe man sometimes becomes two men, how sometimes he becomes solid black, sometimes striped, sometimes the skinny man is really a “bean pole” and other times almost as wide at the other man. A facinating statue!
