Trip 42 — Fasta Åland Walk

Day 10: Kastelholm to Mariehamn
Saturday, 29 June 2024

Today: 32654 steps/25.08 km/15.58 mi/4h 34m
Total: 349836 steps/272.91 km/169.58 mi/50h 37m

Natalia introduced me to the breakfast at the Kastelholms Gästhem: the usual meats and cheeses and a jar of herring.

"And yogurts," she said. "And over here, pie. But it's kind of sour, so you might want to add this," she added, pointing to the vanilla cream.

Pie for breakfast? It was in a glass dish on the stove. Rhubarb. Her description was accurate, and I heeded her suggestion to add the cream. I also tried the blueberry yogurt drink — they're popular here, with many varieties in the supermarkets; this was the best selection I'd seen on a breakfast spread. It was refreshing and sweeter than I expected.

I sat outside by a garden with purple flowers. At the next table was a group of five. We all headed out of the property at the same time, or so I thought — they went into a house across the street. Maybe the Kastelholms Gästhem was larger than I realized.

Less than a kilometer away was Kastelholm Castle. The entrance was free only because the system was down and they had no means of issuing tickets or taking card payments. The audio commentary was via a downloadable app that performed with partial success and was partially engaging, and whose shortcomings I tolerated because of the free entry. I feel the same way in museums as in restaurants: If I'm paying, it's not my job to collect the information. Display it or hand it out.

The app had 15 recordings that didn't quite correspond to the 15 numbered stations throughout the castle. It started off promisingly, with a basic history and immersion in castle life. The build date is unknown; the first recorded mention is in 1388. It's a compact building, put up on what used to be an islet, using local red granite. Attackers got in easily but were then trapped and killed from inside. When the castle was expanded, it was done so inward, diminishing the courtyard.

Farmers were required to help build when called upon, even if it meant letting the land go unattended. Starting in the 15th century, a tenant-in-chief provided men for the king's army, and in return he was allowed to collect taxes however he chose. Negotiating the narrow stairways must have been difficult with so many people rushing about.

The audio guide started to meander without focus, sometimes mentioning characters in history or landowners in the countryside but inconsistent about following up. I could never get item 6 to load. Item 7 was in a room where a woman, clad in a period red dress, was sewing a white one.

"Just follow the arrows," she said, pointing upstairs.

"I'm still listening to this," I said. I was directly in front of the numbered marker.

"I think the next number is up there."

"But I haven't heard this one yet."

By then I'd missed 20 seconds of the commentary, and the app had no replay function, so I had to wait for it to finish and then restart it from the beginning. A few recordings later, it started mentioning canvases where there weren't any and telling me to step inside when I was on an outdoor walkway. I was losing track of the chronology and the characters and my mind started to wander until the end of item 11, "...murdered by eating pea soup poisoned with arsenic," and I had to restart the whole clip to learn who it was. (King Eric XIV, in 1577.)

By item 12 it was back on track, discussing the inadvertent switching of the coats of arms of Åland and Öland in 1569 due to the confusion of the regions' names. When the building was no longer needed as a castle, it became a granary and remained so all the way through the Russian era, and then it was turned into a museum and people dress up in chain mail and mount a horse figure and sit on sheep throws.

And then occasionally they walk to Mariehamn. It's hard to do a big museum and a walk in the same day, especially with the museum first; the museum adds to the foot fatigue but doesn't get credited in the step tally. I also made a brief stop at the Taffel potato-chip factory. It's been operating since 1969 (there's a sealed jar from that time on the premises), and most potatoes grown on Åland end up there.

By the time I sat for a "hot smokey burger" (and a carefully carried bag of potato chips) at the Godby Grill, it was after 1:00 and I'd gone only seven and a half official kilometers. Although I still had one more rural section to cross, Godby felt like a suburb of Mariehamn, with a supermarket, a bank, a few restaurants (including Thai and Japanese options), and a mall.

I was starting to recognize people. There was the teen on a scooter with his girlfriend holding on behind; there was the couple on bikes with all their camping gear who had paused at the Godby bridge and who now paused here as well.

Sometimes they recognized me first. A couple of hours later, near the end of my 20th kilometer of the day, someone on a bicycle passed me and stopped.

"We met you at the hostel!" he said. "Met" and "hostel" weren't quite accurate, but he and the four bikers with him were the group from breakfast.

"I thought it was you," he went on, "and I couldn't believe you walked so far, but it really is you!"

"And you made it here before us!" one of his companions said.

That wasn't so astounding; how long had they waited before leaving? But I milked it. "And I visited the castle."

Their riding from Kastelholm was no small trip, however, especially as one of several daily segments. "We're all journeying in our own ways," I said.

They continued at their pace, and I at mine. A network of pathways brought me to Mariehamn, where I headed down along the eastern marina and stopped for ice cream before checking in to my hotel — a process that merely involved picking up an envelope at the unattended front desk.

Dinner would come later, but first I had to hit the supermarket. I knew exactly where the Grannas Äppel section was.

Go on to day 10