Birchleaf spirea in autumn colours.

I have a set of three reusable bags for fruit and vegetables, in polyester netting or something like that. I keep them in my purse so that I always have them when I need them.

Except when I leave my purse at home because I have my backpack for some reason… and then I have to use something else for the apples I buy. Single-use plastic bags are still available but on their way out, and most shops offer paper bags instead.

More eco-friendly than plastic, yes. But this bag – that I used to bring home six apples – really reminded me how awesome plastic can be, and why it has conquered the world so easily and overwhelmingly. The paper bag was thick and clumsy in comparison to the filmy plastic bags. It felt like the bag with apples took up almost twice as much space as the apples on their own, because it was so stiff. The rolled-up top on its own is like two apples.

I noticed the same on my hike. Nothing beats sealable plastic baggies when it comes to packing food for a hike. Nothing beats ordinary plastic bags for containing any waste and garbage in my pack. I know people got by just fine before plastic became available, but giving them up now would be so very hard.

My knitting is as much part of my daily work equipment as my conference speaker and web camera. Although not quite as much as my mouse and keyboard. Online meetings without knitting make my whole being itch with impatience.

Not a proper review, just some notes for myself.

We went to the theatre today for the first time in forever and saw “Forever Piaf”, a musical about the life of Edith Piaf. A mother/daughter pair (Malena and Beata Ernman) together played Piaf – often on the scene together, one representing Piaf’s external reality and the other one her inner thoughts. An ensemble played the roles of all the other people in her life – mentors, friends, colleagues lovers, more lovers. Somewhat confusingly the same man played several of them, which I guess may have been intended to show how she was drawn to similar men over and over again, but for me it just ended up muddling things.

Many of her most well-known songs were represented but not performed in full. The songs were often woven into her story and sometimes it was unclear to me – not super familiar with all her works – where one ended and the next one began.

Not bad but not quite what I had hoped for, either.

We’re making another batch of candied (flowering) quince this year. Such mouthwatering goodness.

I have ignored everything in the garden this season to the point where I really feel guilty about it. But not guilty enough to counterbalance the total lack of energy and desire to do anything about it, most of the time. Except today I actually cleaned out the weeds from the strawberry planters. Next year we might actually get some berries.

Macro photos from the first evening of my hike, of things I found on the tiny crescent of sandy beach just east of Uddevalla bridge.

There were shells, and halves of shells, and shards of shells, everywhere. So different from the rocky beaches on the East coast and the Stockholm archipelago.

Hällesdalen to Stenungsund, 13 km. Only part of today’s walk actually followed the Kuststigen trail – the rest was just to get me to a point where I could hop on a train back to Stockholm.

A chilly, foggy morning, until the sun finally rose above the treetops and banished both the cold and the fog.

Shortly after breakfast I left the marked trail and made my own way south towards Stenungsund and its train station. I rather enjoyed this, because it gave me something to pay attention to. I mostly zig-zagged along small back roads right in sight of the large, numbered road and managed to stay away from that larger one all the way to the outskirts of Stenungsund.

The online map for Kuststigen was most helpful here, because of its impressive level of detail. It’s a real topographical map, down to the level of individual buildings. In fact the map was consistently more useful than the trail markers these past four days. The blue-topped posts marking the trail were often hard to see: too far apart, hidden in bushes, tucked away behind some electrical cabinet, etc. The easiest way to see whether I was on the right track was to compare the shape of my trail in my tracking app to the shape of the trail on the official Kuststigen site. (What a contrast to Sörmslandsleden, where the physical markers are exemplary and the online maps suck.)

The north side of Stenungsund was truly boring to walk through. A straight, flat road past industrial estates. It was a relief to reach the train station.

All in all, this was one of my most boring hikes. I feel no particular desire to visit this trail again. Perhaps the rest of Kuststigen has more inspiring sections, but if that’s the case then I wish that the designers of this trail had not included these boring parts.

I wouldn’t say these four days were wasted but they definitely didn’t deliver what I had hoped: beautiful views, long hours of meditative walking away from houses and roads and civilization.