Gothenburg; Saturday, 01 July, 2017

I had a good breakfast in the hotel and then headed out. There were two places I wanted to visit during the day – the Aeromuseum in a formerly secret cold war era aircraft hangar bunker tunnelled into the hills, and the fortress at Bohus – one of the most impressive in the country. In both cases the buses left from a bus station on the opposite side of the city and with the tram to it out of action for track repair works it meant hunting down a tram replacement bus.

The bus to the Aeromuseum was only every hour, whilst the castle had four buses an hour and originally I was aiming for the aeromuseum bus, but the tram replacement buses were much more efficiently organised that I’m used to back in the UK and I ended up at the bus station with over half an hour to kill so I decided to revise my plans and – as there was one arriving at that very moment – I caught the bus out to the Bohus Fästning.

The castle/fortress is very impressive, perched on a small outcrop of rock over an otherwise relatively flat landscape at a point where the Göta river divides into a couple of channels. I spent a long time in the castle and it’s almost TARDIS like interior that appeared to take up far more space than there was within the walls.

I spent over two hours wandering round the castle and with the heat and sun I took advantage of the small café selling ice cold water and ice-cream to help cool down and rehydrate. By pure chance I checked the timings of the buses and worked out that if I was on the bus in 20 minutes time I would be able to make a quick change back in Gothenburg onto the bus out to the aeromuseum, so I did that.

About 45 minutes later I was stepping off the bus at a random crossroads in the middle of empty fields with nothing to see except for an old jet fighter parked on one corner, being a subtle hint to the presence of the aeromuseum.

During the cold war, on behalf of NATO, the Swedes dug a massive underground hanger and works area into the ground near an airfield that was used to be able to secretly store and work on large numbers of air force planes. Today NATO have gone but the hangers have been turned into a museum dedicated to all things air related. Whilst I wasn’t particularly interested in the museum exhibits the building itself was amazing.

I spent quite a long time looking around and in the end, I needed to walk quickly back to the bus stop to make sure I made the hourly bus back into Gothenburg.

Back in the city centre I headed over to the canals to go on one of the Paddan canal tours. I’d done it when I’d previously visited, but as a free tour was included in my Gothenburg Card, and as it was still quite warm, the idea of sitting on a boat drifting along the canals and river appealed.

Back from the tour I headed over to the hotel to freshen up and to have a bite to eat, and then with the evening sun keeping the air warm I headed out onto the ferry from the stop by the hotel to go for a ride on the ferry up and down the river, an idea that a lot of other people appeared to be having, but only a couple of us appeared to have thought of picking up the ferry on its inbound trip to Lille Bommens Hamn rather than waiting the 18 minutes until it came back. Consequently, I had a very nice seat with excellent views for the whole trip.

An hour later I was back at the landing stage and by now the wind had started to pick up quite a bit and it was getting quite chilly, so I headed back to the hotel for a drink in the bar and then turned in for an early night.