Visingsö Island Bikers



There's a beautiful, small island which is accessible by ferry off the coast of Granna. After Anne and Jed left, we decided to return to this gem and rent bicycles to explore the island further.

The island is 8.7 miles long and 1.9 miles wide. According to legend, a giant named Vist created the island by tossing a lump of soil into Lake Vattern so that his wife could use it to step over the lake.
Stepping isn't the name of the game for us...we are pedallers this time!  We rented our bikes
and were off. We saw the castle and the large church when we visited with Anne and Jed, so we passed by these this time on our way out and about.  The island has some quaint homes painted in that red color we love as well as homes in a mustardy yellow and the ever-popular white. They were charming.

Luckily, the roads were pretty flat and unpopulated, so I could stop to take pictures along the way to the northern side of the island. We came upon this beautiful church - Kumlaby kyrka - and had to stop riding and go inside.  It dates to the 1100s with the paintings from the 1400s.
 

The painted ceiling impressed me the most.


After leaving the church, we biked through beautiful farm country.



Hello, horses, hello barns.


And then we arrived at the coast for our picnic lunch.  We had the place to ourselves and the site even had a cute outhouse.


(I do believe that in all the years I have blogged, an outhouse has never made the cut. The heart window and cow painted on the actual "throne" inside were truly unique.)

By this time, the clouds were rolling in and fewer pictures were taken as our trip progressed.
The winds also progressed and it was much more challenging to push against the wind as we biked to the southern part of the island.


In fact, the sheep grazing was the last picture I took as a downpour happened and we got drenched
and lost.
The good news is that it's an island.
And we got lucky and chose the narrow, gravel path that led back to the ferry area.
We figure we biked about 14 miles in all and it was worth every drop of rain. 
Yes, every single drop of rain. 



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