I’m on vacation as of this weekend and the kids have summer break, but Eric is still working. Ingrid is busy with her group of friends, but Adrian and I are sort of on our own. And not so good at activating ourselves right now. Left to our own devices, we’d probably just laze the entire summer away on the sofa, doing nothing much. Especially with this heat.

So now we’ve made a pact between the two of us: every day, we will do at least one active thing. Going somewhere, making something, just something.

Midsummer day’s picnic in Hammarskog. Lots of food, thereafter a bit of a food coma, and after that Ingrid and Adrian prepared quizzes for us. Ingrid won Adrian’s quiz, while I won hers.



(Adrian took this last photo, after decorating me with his cap.)

Another super hot day, with around 30°C in the shade, and I am wilting. All I can do is find shade and wait for the evening.

The heat doesn’t affect the kids as much as me. Adrian and his friend wanted to go to the beach, and spent hours splashing and fooling around while I sat and read under a tree. I don’t know where they get the energy from.

Adrian and one of his friends, each with a phone in their hands. Well, they are outdoors…

A combo of Oxögabergsrundan and Trollkyrkorundan, maybe 10 km or so, and Mellannäsrundan, 1.5 km.

We did the most obvious route yesterday. Today we headed into the wilder parts of the park. Yesterday we met plenty of people all day; today – especially on Oxögabergsrundan – barely any at all.

The elevation profiles for today’s trails were much more up-and-down than for the lake circuit yesterday. But in practice we found today’s walk less challenging. There may have been more hills, but the path itself was somewhat more even and easier to walk, with fewer roots to stumble over.

The weather report promised rain for today. A few days ago it promised pouring rain all day. Then the forecast gradually improved as the day got closer, and by this morning we were down to maybe the occasional shower. And in practice we got a few very, very light showers. Enough to put the rain covers on the rucksacks as a precaution, but not enough to get us really wet.

We managed to time both our mid-morning snack and our lunch break between the rain showers. Adrian of course found rocks to climb on top of for his snacks.

I love walking in really wild forests like this, with wild growth everywhere and dead trees left to rot where they fall. When a large tree falls right across the trail, the park staff cut out a big enough chunk of the trunk to allow hikers to pass through, but leave the rest untouched. And they don’t even bother doing anything about trees that you can easily step over or crawl under.

I walked the Trollkyrkorundan trail when I was here on my own a few years ago. It’s funny how my brain remembers places. I remembered the viewpoints on top of the rocky hills, the two “troll churches”. Most of the trail I didn’t recognize at all. But there were small things here and there that were immediately familiar. I knew I had walked past this particular cluster of rocks, these specific dead trees. I remembered stepping on these very roots to climb that rock with an absolute certainty.

After 10 km of walking it was barely three o’clock in the afternoon. No point in heading back to the camp yet, because all we’d do there is sit around and wait for dinnertime. Even Adrian thought more walking would be better. So we drove a few kilometres to the other end of the small park for another short circular walk. This one was so flat and easy that it felt like a bimble in the park.

Adrian loves walking and can easily keep going all day, as long as his pack is light. If it isn’t, he starts complaining. The kilometres don’t bother him, but the kilograms do.

I’m vaguely thinking of doing a longer walking holiday this summer, covid permitting. If we did day hikes, we could make them quite ambitious. But if it’s anything that requires us to carry all our stuff with us, then either Eric and I would have to carry most of his gear, or we’d have to keep the days quite short, or live with a fair bit of complaining. So maybe we need to stick to day hikes still.

Trehörningsrundan 9.5 km + Tärnekullerundan 1.3 km.

A full day of walking. We hiked around lake Trehörningen (“the triangle”) and added an extra detour to see some caves.

It’s a popular route so we met people, passed people and were passed by others, all day long. I was afraid it would be crowded even, but it never got to the point where it felt that way.

It’s customary for hikers on a trail to greet each other. It’s just a natural, nice thing to do. It’s a behaviour one just picks up after a few hikes. In a touristy place like this, though, not everybody you meet is a hiker. Some are just “normal people” out in the woods for a day. You can see by people’s clothing whether they will look at you and say hi or not. If they’re wearing jeans or tracksuit bottoms and trainers and a city backpack, they’re likely to just look past you and pretend they didn’t see you, like one does with strangers one passes in a city street. But if they wear outdoor trousers and hiking boots, you’ll probably get a smile and a greeting.

The trail circles a lake, keeping quite close to the shore at all times, so you’d think it would be flat. And in terms of metres of altitude it may have been. But the terrain was uneven, with rocks and roots everywhere, so it was quite tiring.

Adrian is constitutionally incapable of walking at a slow pace. He scampers, and he runs, and he climbs all the large rocks he can see. Most of the time he was ahead of us and then waited for us to catch up at our energy-efficient adult pace. As a result he was tired after we’d walked barely a third of the way. So we took a long break, ate lots of nuts and dried fruit, and rested his legs.

The weather was unsettled and threatening rain much of the time, but in the end we only got a few drops. On the other hand we got plenty of dramatic light.

The so-called caves at Vitsand were disappointing. Despite the name, there’s nothing cavelike about them. It’s just a bunch of really, really large rocks in a higgledy-piggledy pile that you can scramble through and under.

Adrian ordered a box of Pokemon cards in February. Yes, February. They were supposed to arrive in early March. Then late March. And then April or perhaps May. The endless slippage was incredibly frustrating.

Two days after we got the “April or maybe May” estimate, the package suddenly arrived. Pokemon card boxes are random so you never know what you get (other than the one “front cover” card) but this was a good one. There were several duplicates, yes, but also all of three “shiny” cards. It seems it was worth the wait.

When dinner is done, the dinner bell is rung. It has a wonderfully deep sound that carries well through the house. But it doesn’t do well through closed doors. Neither does my voice.

I used to go upstairs to knock on Ingrid’s door to call her to dinner, but that got tiring quite quickly. Especially when the answer I got was in the vein of “I’ll be down soon, I just have to win this battle”. Not only did I do the work of cooking dinner – I then had to chase down people to come and eat it.

The obvious, practical solution to this was a pair of remote-operated doorbells. The buttons are downstairs in the kitchen, next to the singing bowl. The bells themselves are upstairs in Ingrid’s and Adrian’s rooms. They each chose their own ringtones. One sounds like a bunch of birds tweeting; the other is a more traditional melody. Sort of like 19th-century servants’ bells, but the other way round.

Mostly the bells mean “dinner is ready”, but not always. Today Ingrid rang Adrian’s bell when she wanted him to bring down the iPad (that normally “lives” downstairs but is often “forgotten” upstairs) and had sore leg muscles from gym class. Snarky comments were exchanged, both about “forgetting” the iPad, and about using the bell instead of walking.

It’s a lovely spring day so Adrian and I went out walking. Of the whole family, he is the most willing to join me when I want to go out – especially when the walking involves geocaching, or grilling sausages. Today we picked off three easy caches in the nearby Grimsta nature reserve, with Adrian in charge of the GPS unit.

Adrian found a few rocks to climb, and plenty of sticks. He just never tires of sticks. There is so much that they can be used for! Pick them, carry them, peel them, whack the ground with them…

I found the season’s first hepatica flowers.

Adrian made this rhino sculpture, liked it but had no use for it, so he gave it to me. Now it sits on my desk because I also like it but have no real use for it.

Part of the role of a parent is to accept gift of random crafts, apparently. Drawings and paintings, embroidered pieces of cloth, pin cushions, decorated candle holders, miscellaneous objects made of paracord or steel wire or wood…

I guess the rhino can stay here until it gets replaced by the next thing.