Long weekend, beautiful weather – I went for a full-day hike, and Ingrid came along. Last weekend’s outing was nice, but there was a lot more sausage grilling than walking going on.

Normally the Sörmlandsleden would be my first go-to trail, or maybe something in Tyresta. But due to the long weekend, engineering works were underway and there was no train service from Spånga station, so most trails south of the city (including Sörmlandsleden) were unreachable. So we went for something completely new and different and walked the Lovö trail instead. 17 km around the island of Lovö, mostly hugging its coast, easily reachable by bus.

Another reason for picking the Lovö trail was that I hoped it would have more than just the usual rock and pine and blueberry forests that are everywhere near Stockholm – perhaps some deciduous forests or open fields. I wanted birdsong, and while pine and spruce forests can be lovely in other ways, they usually don’t harbour much birdlife. I remember coming back from a long walk last spring, having heard nearly no birds, only to finally hear them on my way back through a park near the train station.

Lovö did deliver on that. The trail was quite varied, and while much of it was pine forest, there were some pleasant leafy forests along the southern and western coast, with both birdsong and boggy patches that seemed to promise flowering irises soon.

Spring flowers were blossoming here and there, but overall spring hasn’t come very far yet even though it’s warm, so from that point of view the pine forest was good to have, too – at least it was green. I’d like to come back here and see what it looks like in summer and autumn as well.

I stopped for photos, Ingrid stopped for sketching.

The path was well marked and in that sense easy to walk, but it was quite rocky and uneven, and there was a lot of up and down. We were walking slower than usual and the 17 km felt longer than I had intended. Towards the end Ingrid was quite tired and even I felt that I had had enough, so for the last 3 km or so, we left the trail and walked back along roads instead.

Luckily Lovö is so criss-crossed with trails that if we ever want to come back, we can mix and match and come up with a shorter walk. Not only for the kids’ sake.