Another Sunday, another outing based on an idea from a book, this time from “Alla dessa cykelpromenader i Stockholmstrakten”. Since we hadn’t made any plans or preparations in advance, we chose a shortish cycle trip from Spånga to Riddersvik.
Riddersvik turned out to be a beautiful old manor house with a lovely café (excellent cakes, and pleasingly small in size as well) and pretty surroundings. There was an allotment garden below the manor itself, with views of lake Mälaren, and a rose garden on the other side of the manor, and a playground for the kids.
This was a nice contrast to what we saw last weekend at Svartsjö. I found the park around that castle rather depressing. This was a major castle, historically important, close to central Stockholm. It had obviously had grand surroundings once upon a time, but since then obviously hardly anyone had cared for it. For lack of better use it had been turned into a prison for a century, and the best that could be said of the park was that it existed, and was still more or less a park rather than wilderness. Overgrown and untended, with no plantings of any kind.
As a coincidence it turned out that Riddersvik was called Flottsvik some centuries ago and was the other endpoint of the ferry connection between Svartsjö and the mainland.
The wallpaper in the ground floor salons of manor house is the same as in our living room, by the way, but in a different colourway.