Monday, August 19, 1839 Travel Journal

1839

August

Monday 19

4 1/4

9 50/..

Off from Hasslerör at 5 1/4 a.m.  Fair but dull morning, Fahrenheit 61° at 4 1/2 a.m.

2 good little beds in 1 room and had another room – Comfortable, clean house – 2 or 3 cottages close by – The village, if there be more, is scattered at some distance.  Little hamlets or groups of unpainted huts scattered up and down – Wide open plain, i.e. granite-bouldered juniper and heather and bracken and cranberry-covered moor or pine forest with here and there birches and alders, except near the villages or hamlets or farms, where patches of ground are cleared and under cultivation – Sandy road, but good – Drier this morning and not heavy here –

Enter forest at 5 1/2 (and now more spruce than ever before since Götheborg)

which continues with greater or less breaks – But I have slept the greater part of the way, merely looking up now and then till 7 20/.., when the horses not getting on.  Told William to whip up – then to try stopping to let them take breath – Then Ann and I got out at 7 40/.. and walked 10 minutes – Enjoyed it – Fine morning, but we shall have rain during the day?—

At last, at 7 55/.. Hofva, nice little red-painted village – Good little whitewashed church – Better looking (red) Stationhouse than last night – Might sleep here very well –

By and by, forest again – More spruce – There now seems as much Spruce as Scotch fir – At 8 3/4, Ann and I breakfast – She our Jaca chocolate and bread and 2 biscuits, and I the last of Todd’s rice cake –

Luxuriant hops in flower – (3 or 4 plants) at 9 1/4 in little cottage garden close under the forest – Do the hops do so well here and sometimes fail in Kent because there they are too crowded – like not to grow too much among the multitude of their own species? –

A patch of corn here, in the forest, smothered with a sort of tall dandelion now in full flower over topping the corn by much –

At 9 55/.. a man ploughing with 2 little oxen or cows, little short plough – 1st we have seen in Sweden – At 10 to 10 1/4, Ann and I walked up the hill in the forest – The cranberries taste tartish, rather sour –

At 10 1/2, put drag on for a few minutes – Hard to get it off – I got onto the box with William – and helped him to pull back the horses – No mouths – Difficult to make them back to do any good –

Very fine and sunny, more clear blue sky today than we have ever seen since we 1st landed –

At 10 50/.., picturesque little scattered village on pine-surrounded pretty little islandy lake, and our Stationhouse at Boderna the handsomest looking station house we have yet stopped at – 2 stories high – red – 15 good double windows in front besides one 1/2 window on each side the door – Capital place to sleep at? Good Inn and post office too –

Off at 11 2/.. Nice, foresty drive from the last Stage to here as apparently it will be forwards – Singular little dark red wooden church, very neat, near on our right but standing by itself – apart from houses – Nice, foresty drive –

At 1, corn housed (left) – Land sandy – Road ditto, but good – Land seems rather better hereabouts and all today than yesterday – Have passed 2 or 3 better houses during this morning –

Birch, poplar, and alder the prevailing wood next to fir – A few willows and ashes and mountain ditto near towns here and there – Very few oaks – No beeches, not one since Götheborg – Widish expanse of clear ground everywhere in the distance surrounded by pine forest, and at Vrestorp at 1 10/.. Pretty, situated on pretty wooded lake –

At 2 10/.., another lake, but very small (left) – nice open drive from Vrestorp –

At 3 16/.., at Blackstad, neat little red village but the Stationhouse does not look so like a good sleeping place – Had to pay for the horses waiting.  Therefore, would not give the boy anything –

A little beyond the Station the very pretty picturesque regular one-street red village of Blackstad with neat pallisaded bits of ground (gardens) in front – Handsome, new-done-up white church with Doric 2 columned portico on the arch at the entrance door towards the road – The best looking church and the prettiest neatest village we have seen – Road (left) to somewhere, opposite the church – and our road passes into a forest 200 or 300 yards beyond the church. though extensive open country on our right –

At 3 55/.., just out of the bit of forest, fine look down from the top of the rising ground on very extensive plain, bounded in the great distance by a circle of dark pine-covered hill – with forests scattered over the campagne – The most extensive view we have as yet had in Sweden – Blackstad a remarkably pretty little village –

At 4 5/.., fir-forest, left, pretty wood-surrounded lake (right) – Now at 4 40/.., fine and sunny – Our west (my left hand) blind down – In pine forest – Good road – Huts (little cottages) here and there – more population – hamlets etc. etc. today than yesterday – I have this moment (4 40/..) finished inking over Monday 5th instante mense (Return from Bolkesoe) –

Enter Ӧrebrö at 5 1/4, one long good street, pass through grande place in which stands the church, and then immediately at the Inn (the Station) at 5 25/.. Dirty looking house but got a good room –

Then out – At the top of the church at 6 to 6 1/2 – 43 stone steps (and 13 outside up to the door) and 11 ladders – Ann says 178 steps altogether – So the bottom ones, foot rises – Fine extensive view – Could only see 1/2 a dozen church steeples, even taking in the remotest distance – Nice lake to the East, short distance from the town, communicating with it by a little river which supplies the moat of the large, whitewashed, oblong castle, having at each of the 3 corners we could see a 1/2 high (Castle 4 stories tower 2, and basement) large, round tower – Much interested with our view of the nice, neat, good town –

Dinner at 7 5/.. – Good veal cutlets and fritters sized pancakes –

Town – Changed a ten dollar bill before dinner, Ӧrebrö private bank in shop next door –

Had Grotza – Then till 9 25/.., counting over money –

Our Christiania padlock stolen today in the forbud cart, as also Gross’s own padlock in the cart today –

Very fine day, Fahrenheit 61 1/2 ° at 10 1/2 p.m.

Ӧrebrö church stone body and brick tower roofed with shingle and copper sheeting underneath ? or is the bit of new roof 2 men were covering with copper sheeting to remain without shingle?

WYAS Finding Numbers SH/ML/TR/12/0031 and SH/ML/TR/12/0032