land once had the worlds largest fleet of cargo-carrying sailing ships. Until the Thirties, when the rest of the world was turning to steam, these then-poor islands had 30 windjammers. One, the four-masted barque, Pommern, built in Glasgow in 1903, transported grain from Australia to England under the command of its land captain. Pommern is now moored at the harbour of the only town, Mariehamn, adjacent to an excellent maritime museum.

As you might expect with so many rocky islands, there are plenty of shipwrecks (no doubt the ships were captained by non-landers). Two years ago, the islands made headlines when a diver exploring a 170-year-old wreck discovered some old bottles, still with corks in. They turned out to contain the worlds oldest drinkable champagne, 168 bottles in all, two of which were sold last year, fetching 31,000. The government will be auctioning 11 more next month, on June 9, the day the islands celebrate autonomy from Finland.

The 60ft boat was found off the small island of Fgl, a 40-minute ferry crossing from the land mainland. On my first visit to the islands, before the champagne wreck had been investigated, I holidayed in Fgl with friends and their five children. As an add-on to a city break in Stockholm, we rented a rust-red wooden cottage perched on a smooth granite rock, where the placid sea was reed-edged and elegant swans swam.

It was a week of Blyton-esque adventures outings in our own little motorboat, horse riding along flowery lanes, playing on a sandy beach, kayaking between low, bare skerries, spotting sea eagles and fishing for pike with a local fisherman. As well as the motorboat, the cottage came with a sauna and a fish-smoker but no tin-opener. It was all a bit down-at-heel but charming. Make-do-and-mend, was how my friend, Lucy, described it.

This time around, I was staying in more swish accommodation: one of the new cliff houses at a remote hotel on the northernmost coast of the main island. Here, at HavsVidden, sleek holiday homes on stilts sprout from boulders. Their interiors are like spreads from a Scandinavian style magazine. They would be wonderful places in which to hole up for a week or more, under big skies that, at 60 degrees north, never get dark in midsummer. Sadly I wasnt staying long.

On a day trip by car, I passed windmills and apple orchards to visit the ruined fortress of Bomarsund, the largest building ever built on the land Islands. Erected in the 19th century, it was built by the Russians to guard the westernmost point of their empire. All that now remains are sections of its enormous rosy granite walls. The British attacked in 1854 and, so the story goes, the Russian commander welcomed his captors with a cup of tea. Finnish soldiers garrisoned at the fort were transported to England, says Gun.

There are thousands of islands in this archipelago, and, when you start to look beyond their simple beauty, just as many stories.

Getting there

SAS (0871 226 7760; flysas.com) offers flights to Stockholm from 158 return. AirAland (airaland.com) flies from Stockholm or Helsinki to the land Islands from 24 one-way.

If you prefer not to fly, DFDS (0871 522 9955; dfds.co.uk) has ferries from Harwich to Esbjerg from where you can travel by train to Stockholm, via Copenhagen and Malm. Ecker Linjen (00358 18 28000; eckerolinjen.ax) has two-hour ferry journeys from north of Stockholm to the land Islands, from 11 return, including the two-hour bus transfer from Stockholm.

Read the original post:

?land Islands, Finland: an Enid Blyton holiday