Steamboat wharf and swim

You can swim in the Åby fjord by the jetty as well as a little further south (about 400m along the Soteleden) at Grönvik, where there’s a small sand and gravel beach. As long as you are visiting the wildlife park, you are welcome to tie up at the jetty. Bear in mind that there’s no electricity, running water or WC there.

For more than a century, between the 1840s and 1950s, steamboats plied the coast of Bohuslän carrying goods and passengers. On the Åby fjord by Nordens Ark, you’ll see the jetty where the steamers tied up. The wharf was where people got together to buy supplies and catch up on news. There were chemists, off-licences and hospitals in Lysekil, Uddevalla and Gothenburg. Anyone ‘heading into town’ would quite often shop for several families. At one time at the Åby wharf there was also a boathouse, where goods could be stored until they were ready for shipping. In 1907, a round trip on the steamer Albert Ehrensvärd from Gothenburg to Skagen in Denmark cost 6 Swedish kronor. The steamer called at Marstrand and Lysekil en route.