‘I love this island, there’s no other place like it’

It is no understatement to say that Chris Cockfield, 53, has seen the world. The American grew up in Connecticut and moved to Florida to work on board luxury yachts, a hard-working but adventure-filled job which for decades took him to all the dream holiday destinations anyone could think of.

But to him, there is one place that beats them all: Öland, where his Swedish wife Agneta grew up.

The couple met in Florida in 1988. Cockfield was first officer on a yacht, she was there to visit a friend. Later, she ended up joining him on board the yacht and they spent years sailing the world.

“When you work in yachting, especially as a couple, you always get asked what you’re going to do when you get out, and the answer is usually, well, we’ll open a bed and breakfast,” he explains.

So fast-forward almost 20 years and that’s what they did. But it was not completely straightforward. On their travels they had found many countries they would be happy to settle in and call home, and they almost started their business in places as diverse as South Africa, Costa Rica and Florida Keys.

But when an old farm house owned by Agneta’s grandparents at Mellby township on the island of Öland, Sweden’s second-biggest island, became available, it was not a difficult choice to make.

Read the article at The Local (Sweden): https://www.thelocal.se/20170508/i-love-this-island-theres-no-other-place-like-it-oland-sweden