Alingsås transition initiative

The end of July is approaching, and the biketour 2015 has been on the road for about 6 weeks already! This weekend we have been staying at a private family farm near Alingsås, south-central Sweden (http://ostangsgard.se/) This family moved from a nearby town to the countryside 8 months ago, and bought a farm. Their farm is part of the transitive initiatives network (http://alingsås.omställning.net/) – a network of groups that are working to make communities more sustainable and resilient through self-organisation and learning. The local network here was formed in 2009 by 9 people, and have created a range of projects…

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Biketour at Bossgården

After Jönköping, the Biketour stayed at Bossgården, a small farm on the country-side between Falköping and Tidaholm. One of the farm buildings was built in 1818 and still has a traditional reed roof, making the farm an official cultural heritage site. On the farm lives a small family with children, and some volunteers are around as well. There is a big vegetable garden that is being operated as a CSA (community-supported agriculture, where people pay a fixed rate to the farmer but get a varying amount of food depending how much grows). We stayed for two nights and helped with…

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The magic waterfall of Trollhättan

Already before the tour I noticed a town called “Trollhättan” on the map. When I looked it up on Wikipedia to find out about what its name meant (it means Troll’s hat), I read the absurd story of the Trollhättan Falls. The city’s most iconic landmark and probably biggest tourist attraction are the Trollhättan Falls, a huge waterfall in the middle of the city where the river Göta, which goes from Sweden’s biggest and Europe’s third-biggest lake Vänern to Göteborg, falls 32 metres. Unfortunately, a big hydro-electric power station was built next to the waterfall in the 19th century, with…

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