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As capital cities go, Stockholm has a special charm. Small, friendly and compact, it is an easily navigated city. And navigation is the appropriate description, for Stockholm is "the city that floats on water", a great puddling of inlets and waterways, islands and bridges, quays and jetties that have earned it the nickname 'Venice of the North'. With the fresh water Lake Malaren at its back and the vast expanse of the Baltic spread before it, Stockholm really does appear to float, a great ship of state attended by fleets of sailing boats, pleasure craft and ferries. Until winter, of course, when it freezes fast in its berth, a spider's web of watery passages cut through the ice marking its major shipping lanes.

But this city on the water is no seaside resort. A trading post and safe anchorage on the Baltic shipping routes since the days of the Vikings, Stockholm still buzzes with that ancient merchant spirit of industry and enterprise. The city employs one fifth of the country's workforce, accounts for a quarter of its total production and registers more than 20,000 companies in a city and suburb community of little more than a million people. Yet despite this energy and growth (a century ago there were only 100,000 inhabitants) Stockholm still retains the breezy, out-of-doors character of a bustling market town, its remarkable natural beauty wholly uncompromised, a small city-by-the-sea capital that's kept itself trim and tidy and, to the delight of visitors and resident Stockholmers, well-served with a wealth of natural distractions.

For resident Stockholmers the lure of the Skargarden, the archipelago of islands sprinkled along the city's coastline, has always proved irresistible, a traditional weekend and holiday haunt. But unless you have your own boat and weekend cottage or are content to fit in with ferry timetables, the best direction for any visitor is inland, along the shores of Lake Malaren and into the country's unforgettable interior.

Within easy reach of Stockholm, no more than an hour's drive from the twisting island alleyways of Gamla Stan where the city first grew up, stands an elegant, aristocratic nineteenth-century country manor house called Kragga Herrgard. Set on a forested inlet called Ekolsundsviken, on the northern shore of Lake Malaren, Kragga Herrgard was a private home for more than a century and a half before opening as an hotel. Carefully and sensitively restored by the Boner family in the mid 1980s, it now has four main suites and 40 bedrooms, all decorated in soft, country colours and fabrics. It's high-ceilinged salon overlooks lawns and lakeside, and its library is the perfect winter retreat for tea and scones in the English manner.

Here at Kragga Herrgard you'll find deep chesterfields guaranteed to put you at your ease, crackling log fires and glittering silver, flickering candelabra and a satin smooth service that answers every whim with what appears to be effortless efficiency. After a day on the lake or exploring the surrounding countryside - Sweden's oldest town, Sigtuna, and Skokloster Castle with its dazzling collection of Imperial Swedish art treasures are only a short distance away - Kragga Herrgard provides a welcome home-coming that's hard to beat.

From Kragga Herrgard the drive along the northern coast of Lake Malaren is a pleasing run through wood and lakeland before the countryside begins a gradual climb into the Bergslagen, a region of spruce forest, lake and snow-covered highlands where Swedish miners produced the iron for the Eiffel Tower and the copper for the roofs of Versailles. Here, in the village of Grythyttans, stands a collection of more than 20 old houses and cottages that glory in the tongue-twisting name of Grythyttans Gastgivaregard.

Dating from the 1640s, this venerable old inn began looking after guests during the reign of Queen Christina, but when the railroad reached this remote region at the end of the nineteenth century Grythyttans Gastgivaregard was closed down in favour of a new railway hotel. In 1970, however, a local man called Artur Lindqvist managed to overturn a council vote to tear down "the old shacks" and began an ambitious programme of restoration that has seen Grythyttans Gastgivaregard returned to its former glory. With its gracious public rooms, its widely praised cuisine and its nine suites and 50 rooms, decorated in rustic, homespun style and set amid well-tended gardens and courtyards, Grythyttans Gastgivaregard is doing once again what it always did best.

Almost due south of Grythyttans, surrounded by the dark, boulder-strewn forests of the Tiveden National Park yet only 200 metres from the sparkling waters of Lake Vattern, is a charming, ivy-clad manor house called Aspa Herrgard. Originally built in the fifteenth century, this delightful retreat is owned and run by the Oholm family whose sure touch has made Aspa Herrgard one of Sweden's most sought-after hideaway haunts.

Much loved by the eighteenth-century poet Carl Bellman and the summer home of the Nobel Laureate Verner von Heidenstam, Aspa Herrgard has a well-established reputation for knowing how to look after its guests. Everything here, down to the smallest detail, is designed to comfort and pamper, from the elegantly-tasselled room keys and Laura Ashley-designed bedrooms and suites to the beautifully furnished and appointed public rooms warmed by log fires and lit by sparkling chandeliers. Whether you're cross-country-skiing, searching for trolls in the darker reaches of the forest or recovering from the survival courses held in the wilds of the Tiveden National Park (which the hotel will be happy to arrange), Aspa Herrgard is the perfect place to end your day.

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