Kayak on the river Tidan - Sweden

During the last trip to Sweden, one day was dedicated to kayaking on the river Tidan. I've never really practiced kayak/canoeing/rowing in a serious way in my life, but a couple of years ago I started enjoying doing some short excursions on a small lake nearby home. Last summer I was really planning to try it in Sweden, but for some reasons it didn't happen... Luckily this time we had the chance to explore a bit around on a canoe!
We started from KYRKEKVARN that is a very well organized nature sports center on the river Tidan not far away from Mullsjö. Starting from there you have to chose in which direction to go, either north towards Mariestad (that is actually 160km away) or south on the lake Stråken. Here the map they provide you with at the welcome desk.
Maybe the guy at the welcome desk was a bit over-tired of repeating the same stuff over and over to all the customers, or maybe we were a bit overexcited about start paddling as soon as possible, but without being completely sure about why we had to chose at that moment, we decided to head north where it looked a bit more in the forest and nature despite the fact that we had to carry the canoe for short parts.

Just few hundreds of meter north from the base camp we really found us in the forest, paddling slowly and enjoying the nature. As you can imagine it's quite impossible to paddle and take pictures at the same time, so I waited until we parked for few minutes in between some nympheas.

We went on for a while until we reached the first spot where it was necessary to carry the canoe... suddenly the canoe got extremely heavy, and at the idea of carrying it by hand for 200/300meters we decided it was far better to turn and go south: reality is that going north there are several waterpower-stations, and the first one was also the smallest of them, while going south you have simply free paddling for as much as you can imagine.

Once back to the base-camp, we noticed that also there the river was blocked by a waterpower station, so we had to take up our canoe, walk a bit and take a new one for the south journey.

At the first impression the river looked mainly identical, but as southern we were going, wider the river was becoming.

Just before entering the Lake Stråken we stop for a quick pic-nic. One reached the lake there were, in addition to all the kayaks, also quite some motor-boats.

On the way back to Kyrkekvarn we took it quite easy and I had the occasion to take a picture of this very traditional Swedish summerhouse.

So, might you pass by there and want to enjoy the nature and water making a pretty decent workout, definitely go for a kayaking journey on the Tidan.