Summer in Sweden is all about the water. And a voyage down the historic Gota Canal, which travels between the country’s East and West coasts, is the best way to see the country at its most relaxed.

It was a big night for the Gota Canal, the historic cross-country waterway that links Stockholm with Gothenburg through the southern sections of Sweden. The year was 1832 and the pioneering ...

When Thomas Cook & Co in London collaborated with the Gota Canal Steamship Company in 1876, their posters and brochures in 16 languages put Sweden on the international tourist map. However ...

Purpose-built in 1874 for the Gota’s 7m width ... In the 1980s the Swedish government refitted the canal for leisure boating. These days it’s Sweden’s largest recreation ground, a 160km ...

gliding across billowing fields of wheat, turn-of-the-century steamships plying the Gota Canal wind through the flat countryside and offer a view of Sweden's early, agrarian history. But not ...

The result is the 120-mile Göta Canal, which meanders through meadows ... place to read and scribble notes while watching rural Sweden drift by through the open door. Fields of ripening wheat ...