Adrian helped me cook dinner. We made pasta with a carrot and hazelnut sauce.

Eric is away with the kids for three days, visiting his father. I spent the first two days on my own just relaxing, reading and doing stuff around the house. Today I realized it was the last day of my vacation and on my own so it was an excellent opportunity to go out cycling.

Based on a suggestion in a book about cycle outings, I cycled along the northern edge of lake Mälaren, from Alvik to Kanaan. I am not sure if I would recommend it for other cyclists unless they are on mountain bikes. The route was picturesque, true. But many sections of the path were either too steep or too uneven (or both) for normal bikes so I had to get off and walk.

I had to go to town today for some shopping. After a long vacation that I have spent mostly outdoors, being surrounded by noise and crowds was a stressful experience. And it wasn’t even a particularly crowded place, really, only relative to what I’ve become used to. 15 minutes was enough to give me the beginnings of a headache and I hurried home again.

At home I treated myself to some macro therapy.

The gooseberries are almost ripe. Yum.

I love having berry bushes in the garden: gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries… They are perfect. While cherry-picking requires a ladder, with a berry bush even kids can just walk up to them and eat. They require little space and little care.

And the harvest is of manageable size, again unlike cherries and apples. I mean, apples are nice and cherries are delicious, but a whole tree’s worth of cherries is too much for just one household. This year we had an exceptionally large cherry harvest – buckets and buckets full – and despite eating our fill, making chutney, squash and cake, we just couldn’t use them all. Even now weeks after the harvest we are still picking masses of fallen, moldy, bird-pecked fruit every day.

Like last year, scout camp has exhausted Ingrid. This time I was there too and I feel about as tired as she looks.

For me, it’s mostly due to lack of quality sleep, and I imagine it’s the same for Ingrid. I never sleep particularly well in a tent/sleeping bag situation. Sleeping on a thin mattress makes my back and hips hurt. This year we actually invested in a lightweight inflatable mattress and that definitely helped, but it’s still not like a proper bed. I wake up again and again throughout the night because I am uncomfortable and need to shift into a different position but I am constrained by the sleeping bag which doesn’t let me move.

I think next time I’m camping I will try opening the sleeping bag all the way and using it like a normal blanket, so I can move freely and not wake every time I need to turn over.

After two days of challenging hiking, I needed something less physical for my free hours and joined a group of kids for a metalworking session. Half the kids were casting tin figures while the other half created things out of wire.

Spånga scouts’ summer camp takes place right next to Tiveden national park. I had two free afternoons, on the days when I wasn’t scheduled to cook dinner, and used them to go hiking in the national park.

Tiveden is described as one of the most beautiful national parks in Sweden. The path I chose yesterday (Stigmansrundan) was nice enough but nothing extraordinary: pine forest, bilberry bushes and mossy rocks and lake views. Seen all of it before, so I was a bit disappointed.

Today I walked in a different direction (Trollkyrkorundan) and had a very different experience. This side of the park was a lot more dramatic and interesting. The landscape was rugged and craggy, with small but steep hills, rocks and roots and fallen trees to clamber around or over. The forest was lush and wild. This is the kind of landscape I was hoping to see in Tiveden – wild and magical. I’m glad I did this walk.