Monday 18th April - Swedish Fisheries Board

In at 7 am for breakfast, packed away and checked out by 8am, not sad to leave my windowless room I have to say.  I decided to save the £20 taxi fair and walk the 3 miles into to town to collect my hire car.  After about 500m of struggling with my heavy and clumsy holdall, I began to realise this was a bit ambitious.  I reached the bridge before Old Town dripping with sweat even though it was only 8.30am in the morning.  Reached Hertz office after about an hour and waited outside for 10 minutes to cool down.

Got the car sorted no problem, a neat little Fiesta diesel.  A few minutes later and was heading out of Stockholm to one of the nearby "Islands", Drottingholm. After 25 minutes I approached my destination, The Swedish Fisheries Board, Freshwater Research Station, Drottingholm

I parked up and went to the front door, tried the handle and then realised there was an extensive key pad with some sort of instruction in Swedish.....OK I can work this out...or so I thought!  I interpreted the instructions and furiously keyed the pad, sounded a bit like the Rolf Harris Stylophone, if you remember that you are showing your age!!!......NOTHING, I tried several combinations.  In frustration I knocked out several more 'Big Band Dixie tunes' until I was aware of a shadowy figure to my right walking out from another building exit......."Yon Taylor?" It was Hakan Wickstrom, a world renowned eel expert.

"Hello Hakan, it's me John....your doors not working by the way!"

Well I was treated extremely well, coffee and cake sitting out in the sun.  Then Hakan introduced me to a chap call Willem Dekker, whom he described as "Mr Eel", although he did not mention a year!

So Willem, Hakan and I chewed the fat for and awhile about the status of eels, the role of stocking and even branched out into theories about imprinting and their breeding grounds in the Sargasso and who actually discovered the eel larvae.

Then I met some other folks in the Swedish Fisheries Board Institute of Freshwater Research.  One fellow was a geneticist and I discussed crayfish with him for 15 minutes before I cottoned on that he was actually a salmon geneticist......then we talked about salmon with a seamless transition!  I was later introduced to some crayfish folk who gave me some useful contacts for our breeding programme back at Cynrig.

Hakan kindly provided me with a beef stroganoff lunch, I was very impressed with the neatness of the facilities and the home comforts they had, such as a kitchen, restrooms and meeting rooms.

Finally Hakan gave me a tour of their experimental facilities.  He was hoping this would be fully utilised in the near future when they were re-organised to be more closely affiliated with the Universities.  They certainly had some impressive labs.

Well, after a thank you and a quick goodbye it was time to move on and drive north to Alvkarleby where I would stay for the night in readiness for a visit to one of the government Baltic salmon farms.

Pretty good instructions from Hakan took me out of Stockholm.  After a bit of traffic and half an hour later I was well on the way.  Once out of the city traffic and having adjusted to driving on the 'wrong side' of the road, it really was a pleasant drive, miles of beautiful forestry.  I must admit it reminded me of the American mid-west, big sprawling red-barn farms separated by many miles of wilderness.  The weather was perfect, a sunny, warm and clear day.

About 2 hrs into the journey, I spotted the exit to Alvkarleby, this was really bizarre.  Hakan told me to look out for the Chinese building, I wasn’t prepared for this.  In the middle of nowhere was this huge 10 storey Chinese pagoda type building surrounded by what looked like the Great Wall of China!  I had to stop and have a look.

Apparently, it had been earmarked as a hotel site but it had never gotten off the ground. Then some rich Chinese fella, who wanted to create a bit of China in countries around the world, built it as a hotel, restaurant and entertainment centre.  It certainly was amazing... if a little out of place.

A few minutes down the road and I arrived at Alvkarleby, a small, quiet town with a whacking great hydropower station on the River Dalävan.  The place was deserted but stunning.  I picked up my hotel room key from a post-box outside the Tourist Hotel Restaurant.  The room, just across the road, was very nice, quite large, clean, good Wi Fi and had several, big, windows ……bliss!!!

After unpacking I headed into a nearby town, Skutskär for a burger, very quiet town but pleasant.

Then, back to my room, a few e-mails and skype home to the family and off to bed for a descent nights sleep.  It’s been a good day.