Last time we went out walking, it was Adrian who suggested that we should go out. Except his suggestion was not that we should go walking – he wanted to go out and grill sausages, and maybe do a bit of geocaching as well. I somehow lost the grilling part completely as I was planning the outing. While we had a nice walk, Adrian did not get what he had suggested, at all.

Today we rectified that. We went out again and this time we totally did grill sausages.

What we originally had planned for today (and tomorrow and Tuesday) was a trip to Tiveden for some walking and canoeing. The weather report promised rain for all three days, so we cancelled those plans. Plan B was to go canoeing somewhere near Stockholm. But all the canoe rental places we called were fully booked by covid-cationing Stockholmers, so we were forced to cancel this plan as well. Walking near Stockholm fortunately requires no bookings and no advance planning so that’s what we fell back on.

Gålö is a place I’ve read about but not walked before. I’ve been there twice for nature photo mornings (once, twice). At those events we generally move within a very small area, so I didn’t really feel that I’d seen Gålö. And because we always drive there in the dark, following someone else’s car, I don’t even know exactly where I’ve been.

Today we walked the Havtornsuddslingan, which is a 4.5 km circular walk along the coastline of a narrow peninsula at the easternmost end of Gålö.

The path sometimes hugged the waterline, sometimes went through pine and blueberry forest and sometimes hovered between the two. The northern coast, which we walked first, on the way out, was steeper and the path was generally high up on cliffs. We had lots of lovely views there of the sea and small islands and sailing boats, which I somehow missed to photograph.

On the southern side, on our way back, there were more pebbly-rocky beaches instead of cliffs, and the path was even closer to the sea. The wind was from the south, so the sea was rougher and noisier on this side. Adrian and I tried bathing on one of the beaches but the sea bottom was so rocky and uneven and slippery that we kept stumbling all the time, so we turned back before we made it into deep water.

The actual sausage grilling we did on a new grill I bought just last week. We’ve been buying disposable grills for these kinds of outings, but the wastefulness of this has come to grate more and more on me, until I just couldn’t any more. Now I bought this portable, collapsible pop-up grill which I read about on some website some years ago.

It was all sold out in Sweden because of manufacturing issues due to the coronavirus, but I found one in a Danish web shop. I promise to use it lots and lots to make up for the wastefulness of shipping it from abroad. Although it was probably made in China so the trip to Denmark was most likely only a very small detour for it.

The grill worked really well. It was super easy to assemble and use. And the sausages came out really good! The grid on the disposable things sits right on top of the coals, so the food always comes out somewhat burned. It’s sort of an expected part of the grilling experience by now.

The grid on the pop-up grill is much higher up, so today the sausages were not the least bit burned, which might be a first for us. In fact we had the opposite problem – it was hard to get the heat up. Eric ended up blowing on the coals a lot to get them to burn hotter.

Our favourite vegetarian sausages come from Anamma.