Kalmar; Saturday, 23 July, 2022

I had a nice long lie in and only just made it down to breakfast in time to catch the end of it.

After breakfast I went for a quick wander around town, with the intention of catching the bus out to the island of Öland in the early afternoon. However I had misread the timetable and seen the Monday to Friday times and only spotted the Saturday times were an hour different just as the 13:00 bus was departing, so instead I headed into the centre of town for a long lunch.

I was back at the bus station at 14:30 in time for the 15:00 bus, which turned out to be a good idea as the bus proved to be very busy. I managed to get a decent window seat but by the time we pulled out of Kalmar there were only a handful of seats left and a couple of stops further on it was standing room only.

After leaving Kalmar the bus heads up to the Ölandbron, an impressive 6KM long bridge that, at the time of its construction in 1972, was the longest such bridge in Europe. The first part of the bridge takes you up high over the Kalmar Strait, creating a passage for ships passing underneath, but quite quickly the bridge comes back down to only a few meters above the sea to travel the remaining few KM across to Öland.

Having crossed the bridge the bus headed North to Borgholm, the main settlement on the norther part of the island and where the bus emptied out quite a bit. From Borgholm the bus continued north up the length of the island before finally reaching Byxelkrok just over 2.5 hours after leaving Kalmar, and just in time for the skies to open with a spectacular downpour.

I had intended on spending a bit of time wandering around the harbour and town, and possibly stopping here for dinner, but after a few minutes of wandering and getting thoroughly soaked I decided that catching the same bus as I had come in on made much more sense, and after less than 35 minutes looking round Byxelkrok I was heading back south again.

The weather was pretty poor most of the way down the island with the ruins of the castle at Borgholm, which had been clearly visible on the journey up, disappearing into the murk just a couple of hundred feet from the road.

However it was clear the poor weather was limiting itself to Öland as the weather cleared up considerably as we crossed back over the Ölandbron and by the time we were back on the mainland it was blue skies and sunny.

As I’d caught the earlier bus I was back in Kalmar a little before 20:45 so I did have time to get back to the hotel and have the light evening meal there instead, before turning in for the night.