From Främshyttan to just past Morbyn, 20 km.

A day of lovely lakes. I spent the night on the shore of lake Storsjön (“Big lake”). Wikipedia lists 79 lakes in Sweden with that name, by the way. It mentions no interesting features for this particular Storsjön.

I did see something swimming in it this morning just as I was packing up. Larger than things I usually see swimming in lakes, so not a snake. Sort of dog-sized, but with a rounded head. I couldn’t immediately think what it was. I barely had time to grab my camera and get a single photo of it before it dove underwater.

I got my answer soon after I finished packing and started walking, and spotted a large beaver’s nest on the other side of the road where it crossed a stream debouching into the lake. Of course the dog-sized swimming animal was a beaver.

The morning’s walking took me across several very depressing clear-cut areas. I cannot comprehend how this kind of forest management can be allowed in this day and age. It’s disgraceful. A dozen trees remain, and a few stumps still stand here and there, but they’re barely enough to mark the trail across the clear-cut. It’s all churned-up, barren ground, bleak and sad.

Luckily most of the trail went through actual forests, and even nature reserves where the trees get to fall wherever they fall, and are only removed where they completely block the trail. Often the path just adjusts and rounds the fallen tree, or simply keeps going across it. There were quite a lot of fallen trees here due to spruce bark beetles.

There were several beautiful lakes along the Bruksleden today.

The last one I passed in the afternoon was called Abborrtjärnen or Perch Tarn, which is among the top five most common names of lakes in Sweden and had clearly been set up with fishermen in mind. There were plank walks around its boggy edges, leading to various nice fishing spots, and even a wide wheelchair-friendly boardwalk right across it. The fishing spots also made for nice snack break spots, now that there were no fishermen around.

I ran out of water in the late afternoon. Abborrtjärn was the last body of water I passed, and as close as it was to civilization (with even a small car park next to it) I definitely didn’t trust its water for drinking. I kept walking for longer than I had originally intended, until I came to the village of Morbyn where I could knock on doors and ask for drinking water. The first house had barking dogs and a man sleeping whom I happened to see through the front door window, but he wasn’t woken by the dogs or by my knocking. The second didn’t open either, but the third one had a friendly lady who filled my flasks with fresh well water.

At this point I was feeling quite ready to make camp, but I couldn’t put up my tent in someone’s back yard so I had to keep walking past the village. Then I crossed both a railroad and a large road and I didn’t want to sleep next to those either. By the time I got away from the main road and the smaller road after it, and the path turned into the forest, it was rather late. No scenic lakeside camping spot for me today – as soon as I got 20 metres away from the road and found a flattish patch of ground, I put my stuff down. I got the tent up in daylight but finished dinner by the light of my head torch.