Curated Itinerary
High Coast / Kvarken Archipelago: the Rising Land Route
Across the Gulf of Bothnia in four stops: the High Coast’s raised beaches, Skuleskogen’s crevices, the suspension bridge gateway and Kvarken’s multiplying skerries.
Take this route into Google Maps
From High Coast to Kvarken, in the order we curated them.
➤ Turn on the navigator in Google MapsIt opens in the Google Maps app with every stop already loaded, in the order we put them in. From there the route is yours: pick how you travel — on foot, by bike, by public transport or by car — change where you start and where you end, drag the stops into a different order, and add places of your own along the way.
This itinerary spans the High Coast / Kvarken Archipelago listing, the Swedish–Finnish property (2000, extended 2006) that turned post-glacial rebound into World Heritage. Four stops bracket the Gulf of Bothnia: Sweden’s High Coast and Skuleskogen National Park, the High Coast Bridge at its gate, and Finland’s Kvarken Archipelago, where new islands surface within living memory.
The pairing is the point: one geological process — the crust springing back after the ice — shown vertically in Sweden’s stranded shorelines and horizontally in Finland’s multiplying skerries. The Umeå–Vaasa ferry stitches the two halves into a single summer journey.
Give Skuleskogen a full walking day and the Replot bridge area an unhurried afternoon with the viewpoint tower. June to September only, boots and windproofs regardless of forecast, and both visitor centres before the trails: this property needs its own explanation to be seen at all.
Read the full story of this route in the CHO Magazine →
Get this route — explore at your own pace
The walk and the notes are open to everyone, right here. To take the route with you — the GPX and KML tracks for your phone — you need a CHO account, and a free one is enough. We do not sell these routes: we build them ourselves and give them to the people who read us.
Create a free accountAlready have one? Log in.
This route was built with the tools we give operators.
Guides, associations and cultural operators build their own routes here: pick the stops from the archive, add your notes, and the map, the GPX and the printable version come out on their own. Your programme gets a permanent page, your events go on the city pages people read while planning — and if you sell your route as a road-book or a virtual tour, you receive 80% of the price net of tax.
See how an operator account worksBefore you go
A word from your host
Visit both sides in one trip if you can — the phenomenon only clicks when you have seen it steep and flat within a few days. Climb Svedjehamn's tower at low evening light: the moraine ridges reach out of the water like ribs.
Getting around
Örnsköldsvik and Vaasa are the two bases, joined by the summer ferry across the gulf. A car helps on both sides; Skuleskogen's trailheads and the Replot bridge are short drives. Season: June–September.
Step by step
High Coast
A dramatic Swedish coastline where the earth visibly rises. The High Coast demonstrates post-glacial rebound at an unprecedented scale, with land risen…
Skuleskogen National Park
A rugged Swedish coastal forest where granite peaks rise from the Baltic and the land itself continues to rise, freed from ancient ice—a UNESCO World…
High Coast
A dramatic Swedish coastline where the earth visibly rises. The High Coast demonstrates post-glacial rebound at an unprecedented scale, with land risen…
Kvarken
Kvarken is the narrow strait separating Finland and Sweden in the Gulf of Bothnia, where land rises faster than almost anywhere on Earth and where three…
Download for tour navigation
🔒 The walk and the notes are open to everyone on this page. The files to take with you — the stop list as a PDF, and the GPX and KML tracks for your phone — come with a CHO account, and the free one includes them.
Walk it with the navigator on
It opens in the Google Maps app with every stop already loaded, in the order we put them in. From there the route is yours: pick how you travel — on foot, by bike, by public transport or by car — change where you start and where you end, drag the stops into a different order, and add places of your own along the way.