Mörbylånga to Skogsby, 20-ish km.

I haven’t been able to sleep very well during this trip, for no discernible reason. My body is tired by nine in the evening and all I want is to lie down, but it takes a long time for me to fall asleep, and I keep waking through the night. Most of the time, the best I achieve is a kind of half-slumber, and maybe a couple of hours of proper sleep at best.

This night I woke up at three and it was clear that there was no going back to sleep. I played sudoku on my phone and read on my Kindle and listened to the birds until the pre-dawn light was enough to move around in. Packed and ready to go by six, before the sun was fully up.

Fairy tale forest in golden dawn light with gentle birdsong and a babbling brook:

18 km of walking on mostly flat and even ground only takes me 6 hours, breaks included, so I have a whole lot of time today that I need to spend somehow. Getting there too early is no good. The walking is already so meditative that I don’t need more hours of sitting around and doing nothing in the evening. And there is only so much reading and sudoku I can do. So: lots of photo breaks and exploring random things.

Here’s a bathing jetty.

I was having thoughts of breakfast by half past seven, but there was the usual question of water to be solved first. (I do keep enough of a reserve to have drinking water for at least half a day extra, but cooking porridge takes a lot of water.) I can’t go knocking on people’s doors at half past seven in the morning, though! Luckily there was a plumber’s van parked outside one of the houses I passed, with a plumber just leaving the house. It wasn’t his house, as I’d first guessed, but his presence meant there were people awake and around.

I got not only fresh water but also some of their home-grown apples. Better than the store-bought ones from yesterday, even those were also Swedish.

This stage of the Mörbylångaleden trail passes through the Beijershamn nature reserve. There was an attempt to establish a harbour here in the 1850s, and a 2 km long pier was built. The harbour failed because the sea streams deposited silt and mud until it became unnavigable. The pier remained, and the silted-up areas around it became a paradise for birds.

The area is a patchwork of nature reserves now, with boardwalks and platforms and viewing towers.

This was roughly the midpoint of my planned walk for today – and it was only ten o’clock in the morning. Time for a detour. I put my pack down just after the first cow stile and the last picnic table on the old pier, and walked most of the way to the end and back. It’s an odd feeling to walk on such a long and narrow strip of land, with the sea in touching distance on both sides.

The shallows on both sides were like bird soup. Waders and geese and ducks and the occasional swan, gulls and terns, and endless noise.

After Beijershamn the trail swung back inland, between fields. Lunchtime brought the usual challenge of trying to find shade. I ended up sitting in the shade of an oak tree, which sounds more scenic than it was, because on my other side was a derelict barn with a saggy door and bird droppings everywhere inside. Matched my backpack in colour scheme, though.

I deviated from the trail again to go through the little village of Eriksöre, with its old houses and barns.

Eriksöre is one of the many villages participating in Öland’s annual harvest festival, and its signature contribution seems to be pumpkins. There were pumpkin fields in all directions, with Halloween pumpkins, small decorative pumpkins, and eating pumpkins.

The stage ends at a hostel and biology research centre just south of Skogsby. I was hoping to set up camp in some meadow or yard near the hostel and use their facilities. But the hostel reception was closed due to the single member of staff being ill, and everything was locked up, so I didn’t get to use the bathrooms after all. They had a nice garden and a pretty meadow, which looked quite appealing – flat and newly mown. But as I was sitting there, contemplating my life, a literal busload of hockey players arrived. Dalen Hockey had apparently booked the main building of the hostel for some kind of team-building thing. They were all behaving in a very civilized manner and had adult minders and everything, but they were inevitably loud. So I waved good-bye to the rose garden and went onwards.

The first pasture, a kilometre later, looked very nice. Mostly flat and open, and with a large tree that I could sit and read under, and no smell or sign of recent cattle activity. I had put down my pack under the tree and was looking for the best tent spot when I found day-fresh cow pats instead. Where there’s cow pats, there’s bound to be cows, and I don’t want to wake up to a cow trying to get into my tent.

Onwards again.

The next meadow had a picnic table and an information plaque, and no cow pats. And it had lots of tall, uneaten sweet grasses like clover, which surely must mean that there will be no cows here. This is where I will stay.