Glada Hudik! – that’s what big banners say as you walk into town from the harbour at Hudiksvall, but the slogan rings rather hollow. Hudiksvall’s great days were the 1900s when it was a hugely prosperous commercial centre, and the remains of that prosperity can be seen in the magnificent wooden villas and almost absurdly overblown church that greet you when you arrive. But the town itself has a rather dispirited, down-on-its-uppers feel, with a number of vacant shops and a tourist office that seems more geared to local am dram productions and visiting folk singers than to any actual tourist sights. It didn’t help that it started to rain just as we arrived (so much better than starting to rain just before we arrived, or – worse still – long before we arrived, but not conducive to a cheerful atmosphere). There were a few local Swedes hanging out in skimpy clothing while we sloped around in our waterproofs but even with a population this hardy, Hudiksvall lacked bustle. A sudden downpour on the way back from the supermarket led us to take refuge in O’Leary’s, a sports bar with TVs everywhere. The sound was on for the rally cross world championships (dominated by Swedes) but in the ladies’ loo there was a secret non-sports TV showing a comic love story about an American in Sweden, shot mostly in English with Swedish subtitles. I would happily have hung out in the loo all evening watching that, but it wouldn’t have been fair on Wolfgang, so we trailed back to the harbour and the long stretch of empty guest mooring (to think we were worried about not getting a berth!)
Tomorrow is a harbour day. Wolfgang needs to work and strong winds are predicted in the night, so we want to be somewhere secure. And we need to rethink our sailing plans. It was evident by yesterday that we wouldn’t be able to get all the way up to Höga Kusten and still be sure of being back in Stockholm in time for me to catch my flight and for Wolfgang to pick up Bexy and Flo. We had therefore decided to pootle slowly down the coastline, which might not be Höga Kusten but still looked impressively mountainous from out at sea. Unfortunately. now that we’re actually here it’s become evident that the exciting bumpy bits that looked so dramatic against the sky are in fact a long way inland and that the coastline itself is nothing special. So we’re now thinking of hopping over to the Ålands instead. The wind should be from the north for the next few days so we could get over there and back with no worries about not making it into Stockholm in time.
We still haven’t given up on Höga Kusten, though, we just realise it’s a project that needs a lot more time. Next year we’d like to sail all the way up to Haparanda and leave Akka somewhere up there like Lumeå to overwinter so we didn’t have to worry about getting back down again in time.