It took three trains and two buses and seven and a half hours and a near miss, but now I’m here, in Ottenby, at the southern end of Öland.
I nearly didn’t make it, due to my own thoughtlessness. I had to change buses in Mörbylånga. The second bus was to leave from the same stop where I got off from the first one. I had been standing there for about ten minutes, and had another minute or two to go, when I realized that the same bus stop does not necessarily mean the exact same spot – the bus stop has its other half on the other side of the road. And since my first bus left the main road to head in to Mörbylånga, and the second bus would need to drive out of Mörbylånga back to the main road… I was on the wrong side of the road. It took me a minute to jog across the road and onwards to the “same but other” stop – and the bus arrived thirty seconds later. Had my brain not woken up in time, I would have missed my only chance today to get to Ottenby and instead been stuck there in Mörbylånga.
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It feels a bit like the end of the world: last stop on the bus, with an overgrown little shelter to mark its spot, and a lot of near emptiness in all directions around me.
Today was going to be a transport day only. But… I’m here, I’ve got my boots on, I have at least four hours of daylight left, and I am so close to the actual southernmost tip of the island. (The signpost says 4.5 km.) I could sit around and do nothing – or I could walk there and back.
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Southern Öland is mostly limestone, thorny bushes, sheep, rocks, and the sea.
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There is a lighthouse at the southern tip of Öland, called Långe Jan – apparently the tallest lighthouse in Sweden. Across the wide open landscape, it looks like I’m almost there, even though the sign says I still have 1.8 km to go.
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And here it is. Tall and imposing indeed! Open for visitors, in principle, but we’re in the low season, so it had closed for the day before I even got off the bus.
Instead I explored the surroundings. Next to the lighthouse is Ottenby bird observatory, where tens of thousands of birds are caught for ringing every year, and many more are observed. Because of the location, it’s passed by many migratory birds, and the coastal meadows and shallow beaches offer them lots of food. According to the observatory’s website, more species of birds have been sighted here than anywhere else in Sweden.
For me, with no particular knowledge of birds and no binoculars, it was just a lot of birds. “Looks like a bunch of geese of some sort” and “that’s a swan” and “some kind of wader”.
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It wasn’t just birds, either. On one side of the headland, a herd of seals were basking in the evening sun. I didn’t want to get too close and disturb them, but from where I was, I counted at least thirty.
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As fun as this was, it was time for me to head back, if I wanted to get my tent up before the dark. Here’s a last look back at the lighthouse.
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I had walked down there along the shortest path, more or less straight south from Ottenby. On my way back I headed roughly north-east, so as to end up at an STF camping site – and to see something different.
The seaside meadows on this side were like a savanna, but with hawthorn trees instead of acacias. Just like in the savannas in Africa, they get their characteristic shape from animals eating the lower branches. Hawthorns, left alone, grow into bushes. But cows eat the branches they can reach, until the hawthorn becomes a tree with a flat-bottomed crown.
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Ottenby used to be a village – “by” means “village” – and the lands around it were owned by a monastery. In the 16th century, along came Gustav Vasa and reformed the church and took the lands of most monasteries in the country, including Ottenby, which became a royal farm. Other kings later brought in English sheep for breeding, and deer for hunting. There’s a deciduous forest that still has a herd of deer, reportedly all descendants of the original herd, and according to sources, King Carl XVI Gustaf still has and uses the sole hunting rights for the Ottenby Royal Farm.
I reached the camping site right at sundown, but after the reception had closed for the day. I picked a suitable-looking flat spot of grass and put up my tent anyway, and used their facilities, and will pay tomorrow.
In total I probably walked 10-12 km here in Ottenby today.