Lövsjön to Kolmården, 2 km.

The only thing left for today was to walk out of the forest to the main road at Kolmården, and then take the bus + train + bus + train combo back home. Which wasn’t as easy as it sounded. I needed the bus from Kolmården Zoo to Kolmården station. I stood at the stop for buses heading towards “Kolmården” but when the bus arrived and I got on and told the driver where I was going, he said he was going the other way. So in order to get to Kolmården station, I actually wanted the bus for Norrköping, not for Kolmården. Oh well. Luckily the next bus left only half an hour later.

Lilla Göljet to Lövsjön, 20 km. Half of stage 34 of Sörmlandsleden and all of 33.

It did indeed rain all night, sometimes lighter, sometimes heavier, and stopped at around eight, at which point I got going.

Everything was wet and somewhat muddy, but there were boardwalks in most of the really muddy places.

The clouds cleared away pretty soon and I got sunshine already for my late breakfast.

After a few hours, it was as if the rain had never been at all.

Section 34 of the trail was average. Uninhabited, maybe, but that doesn’t preclude clear-cut forests.

Lunch by lake Skvättsjön, just before the end of section 34.

The first parts of section 33 were the wildest and hardest-to-walk parts of the entire trail that I can remember. Zig-zagging down steep slopes, clambering over rocks, ducking under and climbing over fallen trees. I’m glad the ground was mstly dry – doing this in the mud would have been… interesting.

All this scrambling took me back to the high cliffs of Bråviken. The view here was much more appealing than the day before yesterday: the waters of the bay were broken up by little islets, and there was a castle on the other side.

The afternoon, after the trail turned back north away from the coast, was mostly pretty pine forests. For a while the path went along the top of a ridge, probably shaped by the ice sheets ten thousand years ago. It made for nice views.

It started raining again in the early evening, with one giant rumble of thunder and a short burst of hail. I hadn’t run across any place where I could put up my tent – not even a nice space, just enough flat ground to fit me and the tent – so I kept going. At the southern tip of lake Lövsjön finally there was a space of some kind. Not much more than a roadside stop, with muddy car tracks, a worn picnic table and a trashy-looking fireplace. There was nothing more scenic to look forward to, and two-three more kilometres would take me to Kolmården with its parking lots and bus stops, so I stayed.

The magic of weather forecasts and live radar maps made my evening a lot nicer than it could have been. When I stopped, it was raining quite constantly. The radar map promised that it would stop twenty minutes later. Instead of cooking dinner and putting up my tent in the rain, I huddled under a spruce tree and waited and watched the raindrops on the surface of the lake. And indeed, the rain stopped, so at least my dinner was dry.

The night was noisy with birds again, especially cranes. I could hear them hooting and at one point glimpsed a couple of them in flight, but they turned in a different direction and didn’t come close enough to really see them.

Nävsjön to Lilla Göljen, 20 km. Sörmlandsleden stage 35 and half of 34.

I begun the day by accidentally stepping on my favourite wooden cooking spoon and breaking it. I’m going to take it with me to dispose of it, but I don’t think there’s any saving it.

The trail continued its loop around lake Nävsjön. The lake is a popular fishing spot, with “planted” rainbow trout, rental boats, and convenient fishing spots all around. How can you tell a fishing spot from a picnic spot? The fishing spot has an extra small table with a bucket, for cleaning the fish.

Apparently not all of the Sörmlandsleden trail is in Sörmland – sections 33 and 34 are mostly in Östergötland.

The usual kind of walking in the usual kinds of surroundings. Mossy bits and rocky bits and lots of pine. Probably plenty of bilberries and lingonberries later in the season.

No shortage of wellsprings around here, and also no shortage of water in them. We’ve had some decent rain recently so the groundwater levels are good.

Lunchtime came, with the usual struggles to find a suitable stopping place. I went into someone’s grassy field to get enough room to cook lunch. It was fenced in, but there were no animals and no work ongoing, so it should be OK.

The afternoon had some more boring walking. Stage 34 is described as being all uninhabited forests. And yeah, a gravel road doesn’t count as human habitation, but still, not exactly wilderness.

I reached the shelter at Lilla Göljet at five o’clock. Rain had been imminent for a while already, and it finally started raining for real just as I passed a sign 200 metres before the shelter. I normally keep walking until later than this – stopping at five means an awful lot of evening just sitting around – but this time I let the weather make the decision for me. The forecast promised rain all night. The tent is waterproof but I would still have ended up putting it up in the rain, cooking dinner in the rain, and then carrying a wet tent tomorrow.

The shelter was empty when I got there. I made myself comfortable in the corner with the best views. Half an hour later, more people arrived. In pairs, even, which meant near-constant talking between them. They weren’t any more chatty than any other normal people would be, but I had imagined being here in the quiet on my own.

On the other hand, one of those people immediately decided that we needed a fire. Which was very cosy. I know how to make a fire but somehow it just didn’t seem worth the effort, just for me. So that was nice.

Nävekvarn to Nävsjön, 12 km – Sörmlandsleden stage 36.

My progress with the Sörmlandsleden trail is currently limited by transport options. Getting to Nävekvarn took almost four hours and involved four legs: commuter train, bus replacing ordinary train, train, and another bus.

For similar reasons, I’m starting this hike in Nävekvarn and walking backwards to Kolmården. The travel options to and from Nävekvarn gave me 4 different choices, arriving at three-hour intervals. Whereas Kolmården is a popular destination and has buses at least every half-hour Walking the “right” way and arriving in Nävekvarn on the last day and then having to wait 3 hours to get on a bus did not sound convenient at all. Now I just had a 40-minute pause in Nyköping, with a view of Nyköping central park.

I didn’t spot the information boards that are always there at the start of each stage of the trail. The first signs of trail markings that I saw was this extraordinarily sad-looking signpost. Would this be symptomatic of the whole day? Scruffy signs along the edges of small-town streets?

Indeed not. Even before I left Nävekvarn, the trail took a detour to make a loop around the small island of Skäret, just for the scenic views. If you look for Nävekvarn on a high-level map of Sweden, it’s inland and looks to be far from the sea. But Nävekvarn (and Kolmården) are situated on the northern coast of Bråviken, a long and narrow bay in the Baltic sea.

The weather was very changeable, and with the trail going in and out of trees, I was constantly adjusting my clothes. Sunglasses on, sunglasses off. Zipper up, zipper down. Hands tucked into pockets, hands out.

After Skäret the trail climbed up onto a high cliff, with even wider views that are marketed as fabulous. They were wide, but not very interesting – there was mostly just unbroken sea to look at, and a thickly forested shore on the other side. The only interesting bit – something for the eyes to catch on – was the old Marviken power station on the other side of the water.

The trail swung away from the coast and into forest. The forests here are protected so it was lovely walking. Never very far from roads, but apart from a few signposts here and there, it felt like civilization was distant.

The forest was all lush and green. May is the most beautiful time of the year. Everything is fresh and full of new life.

There were many small rocky streams. A few larger ones had supported small local ironworks in the 17th century. Including the river in Nävekvarn – “kvarn” means “mill”, and the water mill there used to power bellows for smelting iron.

A cemetery for victims of a cholera epidemic in 1855. Th only signs of it existing were old, hand-made plaques commemorating those buried there. I wonder how old they might be. Not 1855, I guess, but old.

There was a fair amount of the usual Sörmland pine-and-rock-and-bilberry combination.

Since I only started after lunchtime, I walked 12 km today, from Nävekvarn to Nävsjön. The main trail goes east of the lake, but there’s an extra circuit around the west side, and I was happy to lengthen my hike. Again due to transport complications the sections that I can walk this time only added up to 45 km, which is barely enough for three days. Extras are welcome.

I found a nice flat spot right next to the lake. There was supposed to be a shelter a few kilometres onwards, but this felt good to me.

A family of Canada geese – two adults and seven tiny balls of fluff – came up out of the water just as I got there and started nibbling on the grass and the fresh leaves on the bilberry bushes. At first I was so careful to keep my distance and not make any noise when I was putting my tent up, but they didn’t seem bothered by my presence at all, and walked closer to me than I had dared do myself.

The lake was busy and noisy with all sorts of water birds, big and small, all evening and again from dawn. Geese, gulls, cranes, swans.

Sörmlandsleden from Kolmården to Katrineholm. Today: Forssjö to Katrineholm, 12 km.

Semi-civilized nature reserves and recreation areas, with comfortable, even paths, made for easy walking.

Inevitably, as I got closer to Katrineholm, the soft paths covered in pine needles were interrupted by stretches of asphalt, to get across roads and past farms. Asphalt truly is the nemesis of my feet – hard and unyielding. It looks like easy walking, and I guess objectively I make good time, but it is not comfortable.

This tree-lined lane, just before I hit the first suburban streets, was popular with locals. Very nice if you’re cycling, or if you’re just out walking without a pack, but I felt every thud of my feet against it.

I think of these last kilometres as my payment to get access to the good kilometres out in the forest.

Compared to the wild nature of the past three days, this stage was blandly pleasant. Looked pretty enough, lacked character, so I don’t have much more to show or say about it.

Sörmlandsleden from Kolmården to Katrineholm. Today: Eskilstorp to Fagerö. Part of stage 31, all of 30, and a teeny bit of 29; 20 km in total.

The first half felt pleasant but ordinary, while the later parts of the day were more scenic, and I’d say that stage 30 is among my favourites of the ones I’ve walked up until now.

Today was the day that the weather app had originally forecast a full day of pouring rain for, but that got downgraded over time, until all that was left was some rain in the morning. I had reached a lakeside shelter and had my breakfast shortly before the rain was supposed to arrive, and thought that I might sit it out in the shelter. It would be convenient to not have any wet gear to pack.

The sky was an even grey, I couldn’t see any difference in the direction where the rain was supposed to come from, so maybe another layer of clouds higher up was responsible for that?

The rain that finally came was so weak that I was almost disappointed. And instead of stopping, it petered out into a misty almost-drizzle. I didn’t want to sit around any longer, so I ended up getting out the rain cover and rain coat after all. An hour wasted for nothing.

Stage 31 mostly went through the usual pine forests. There was a brief deviation onto a gravel road…

… because the original trail somehow passed through (or at least skirted the edges of) an area badly hit by the spruce bark beetle. That looks both unpleasant and dangerous.

On the gravel road I saw two baby birds. Still partly baby-coloured, but I think they looked like nuthatches. Apparently old enough to leave the nest – but still so young that they were just cluelessly wandering around in the middle of the road and chirping. A dangerous way to start your life.

Stage 30 had a more dramatic nature, with exposed bedrock and the occasional big boulder.

I was happy for my trekking poles – without them, I’d have spent all my time watching my footing, and probably still stumbled. Now I still stared a lot at the ground but could relax a little bit about it.

Lunch was late AGAIN because there was just nowhere to stop, with enough space for me, my pack, and my stove. I didn’t get a proper lunch until two o’clock, and I was starving by then. It feels inconsiderate to spread out my stuff right on the path itself, but I might have to force myself to get over that feeling, because eating does feel rather important.

My current go-to lunch on overnight hikes is instant noodles that I top up with other stuff to make it more filling. For this trip, my noodle toppings are canned sweetcorn and hard-boiled eggs. Half a small can of corn is just right for one portion of noodles, and the other half keeps well enough overnight in a small air-tight container.

My lunch stop was at the top of Vensbrinksberget, the highest point in Sörmland. It has a viewing tower, which I now climbed. I’m impressed by the work that must have gone into this – hauling all the materials up here, and then building the tower. How do you even build a tower like this, in a place like this?

The views from the top of the tower were wide but not very exciting. There were markers for the cardinal directions at the viewing platform at the top, but they didn’t make much of a difference – everywhere I looked, it was just forest. The forest is much better viewed from ground level.

I stopped for the night at a municipal lakeside beach on Fagerö. According to the map there’s a shelter coming up in just over a kilometre, but it’s open towards the west, and that’s where the (strong) winds were coming from, so I chose an east-facing spot instead.

Wildlife: A fox, who ran as soon as it heard me. A small rodent who ran across the path during one of my breaks; I don’t know enough about them to say what kind. Loads of songbirds.

In addition to the baby nuthatches, I also saw a family of Great Crested Grebes (tuttpütt/skäggdopping). When they noticed me, the five babies all scrambled onto the back of their parent who took them into safer waters.

Sörmlandsleden from Kolmården to Katrineholm. This will cover stages 32:1, 32 to 28, half of 27, and 27:1. The planning is entirely dictated by public transport. Train + bus to Kolmården today, and I’ll be taking a train back to Stockholm from Katrineholm, so that’s where I’ll have to be by Friday mid-day-ish.

Today I walked the connecting trail 32:1 from Kolmården to the main trail, and then all of stage 32 and part of 31. 17 km altogether.

Stage 32 was among the most beautiful ones I’ve walked thus far. Not due to any spectacular feature or stunning views, but just the overall everything.

There was a lot of airy, open pine forest. The absence of scruffy undergrowth just makes it look extra beautiful.

There were stretches of plank walks across bogs. The bog was all dotted with the white flowers of Marsh Labrador Tea (skvattram/sookail). It’s a common plant, but I don’t think I’ve ever timed any of my bog walks to coincide with its flowering. Photos don’t do them justice (especially since the densest patches were a bit away from the path) – they were like swarms of tiny clouds hovering over the lower plants.

Cottongrass was doing the same.

I took my lunch break later than I might otherwise have done (again, I’m kind of getting used to this) because there just weren’t any good places. The spot I finally found was very cosy, though, even if the bench only had room for my things, especially the stove, and not for myself. The ground around the bench was firm enough to stand on, but very waterlogged.

After the bog, the trail followed the tracks of an old railway, long gone. Straight and even and smooth, it made for easy walking.

I passed a signposted hunting pit. It’s kind of weird that, nearly two hundred years after it was last used, it’s still here and recognisable for what it was. (With the help of a sign, at least.)

There were pretty lakes, as usual.

Dried fruit is the best trail snack. Especially larger fruit (so, like, figs or apricots rather than raisins or cranberries) that’s firm and dry. Sometimes I accidentally buy “wet” dried apricots – I don’t know what they do with them, but I find them horrible.

I’ve got two one-litre water bottles inside my pack, and a small one easily accessible in a hip belt pocket. The small one I inherited from Adrian. He’s too cool for dinosaurs now. I’ve got a Hello Kitty one from Ingrid as well. I’m not too cool to embrace my inner child.

The trail managed to stay away from human habitation nearly all the way. There were no clear-cuts and no gravel roads. Very beautiful and pleasant walking. Only once did the trail descend onto a short stretch of highway, to cross an even larger highway, but as soon as that was done, it moved onto a small path again.

Evening brought interesting rock formations in pretty evening light.

I had vaguely been thinking of aiming for the lakeside shelter halfway through stage 31, but got tired before I got that far. Stopped for the night at Eskilstorp, which, judging from the name, was at one point the site of a small farm or crofter’s cottage. The cottage was all gone, except for the stone foundation, which was still all square and house-shaped.

It was tempting to put up my tent in the middle of the foundation, but the ground there was lumpy and full of big tussocks of grass, so I had to move a few metres away.

Wildlife: a few bones of a dead deer, and birds. So much birdsong! Blackbirds and chaffinches everywhere, but I also heard cuckoos many times, and of course a background chorus of various smaller songbirds. Earplugs were a necessity to be able to sleep.

From the shelter south of Skogasjön on stage 27, to Katrineholm train station along connecting stage 27:1. 10 km. Walking as far as my feet took me every day left me with less walking for today than I had vaguely envisioned.

Inevitably every step took me closer to civilization.

I was already steeling myself for another slog along some horrible unshaded cycle path, but there was none of that. For a good while the trail ran parallel to a main road, but mostly managed to keep out of sight of it.

The forest became a tidily managed nature reserve.

The trail continued and stayed pleasant all the way to central Katrineholm, along a tree-lined avenue and through the city park.

With my usual early start and only 10 km to walk, I was at the station already by 11 and home by 14.

From lake Myr-Gryten in the middle of stage 25 to the shelter just south of lake Skogasjön on stage 27. 22 km.

The days from day 3 to the next to last day of the hike are the best ones. So for a four-day hike, day 3 is the zenith. Daily life is far away, I’ve settled into a good rhythm, and it feels like I could continue like this for a long time.

It’s a beautiful time of the year. Everything is getting greener and lusher, almost so I can see it happen.

Bilberries were only just getting started in some places, while in others they were already flowering. Bilberry flowers look like small berries of their own.

Around lunchtime, the trail veered close to Katrineholm and then skirted around its eastern edge for a while. All of a sudden I went from quiet forests to Burger King and big-box stores.

This worked out rather well, because I was getting worried about my water supply. The first freshwater spring this morning had several large frogs in it. The water looked crystal clear, but the idea of drinking frog bath water still felt strange. I filled up my flasks anyway – frog water is better than no water, and I can use it for cooking my noodles, if nothing else – but it’s not what I’d choose, if I had a choice.

The next spring was effectively dry. Quite often the springs around here have a short, wide section of concrete around them, to keep them clean, topped with a lid of some sort. This one had a pipe going down over a meter, and the water was all the way at the bottom, with no bucket or anything.

By the time I got here, I was down to less than half a bottle of clean, frogless water. From the supermarket here I got that topped up, and fresh fruit was also nice.

After the supermarket the trail stayed on the outskirts of the Katrineholm urban area for longer than I liked. This long, straight paved track went on forever, with an early-stage construction site on one side and some kind of logistics park on the other. Ugly, boring, sun beating down on me, asphalt hurting my feet, nowhere to even stop and take a break. I promised myself a proper sit-down break the moment I left this track, even if that’s next to someone’s back yard.

My rest stop did indeed end up being right behind someone’s yard. On my other side, fifty metres of sparse trees separating me from an industrial area. With some creative positioning I could get both out of my view and get some water and dried fruit in me. It was really well past lunchtime, but while this place was OK for a quick snack, I wasn’t desperate enough to set up my stove here.

The surroundings got nicer again when the trail got out of Katrineholm.

Unfortunately the nice areas kept getting interrupted by the churned-up ground of recently clear-cut terrain.

I got back in my groove and just kept walking. When it was about dinnertime, I reached a shelter and decided to stop there for the night. My tracker app showed that I had walked 22 km without really noticing it.

My plan was to set up my tent somewhere roughly in the vicinity of the shelter, just so I could use the picnic table and the outhouse. The cloudy sky made me change my mind. The first drops landed while I was in the middle of cooking dinner, and I ended up moving into the shelter.

Cons of sleeping in a shelter: cold. It wasn’t freezing in the morning, but it also wasn’t far off.

Pros of sleeping in a shelter: lots of space for my stuff, and lots of fresh air. The air in my small tent may be warm, but it can also get stuffy and stinky overnight.

From Svalboviken (ish) in the beginning of stage 24, to Myr-Gryten in the middle of stage 25. 20 km.

Birdsong woke me at five, but with earplugs I could get another hour or two of sleep. I get pretty decent sleep in my tent these days: maybe not a full night of deep sleep, because I wake up every time I want to change position, but I feel rested in the morning.

If the challenge for day 1 is to get my mind into proper hiking mode, then the challenge for day 2 is accepting and overcoming bodily hurts. My muscles are sore. I’ve got bruises on my hips from the rucksack’s hip belt, to the point where it hurts to pull the waistband of my trousers over them. There’s nothing for it other than gritting my teeth and putting the pack on and getting going.

The sky started threatening rain shortly after breakfast. I stopped to take this photo, and a minute later, it was raining. It was a rather pleasant rain, with sparse drops, not the kind of drizzle that gets everywhere. I could even stop to take photos without worrying about the camera.

It’s not always easy to find a suitable place to stop for a snack. This part of Sörmlandsleden mostly goes through rocky forest, and often there’s not enough flat ground next to the path to put down my pack. I like to be able to not just put my pack down, but also sit down myself and stretch my legs.

The trail keeps passing clear-cut areas. They’re so depressing to look at. Churned-up ground, rocks sticking up every which way, trees thrown down criss-cross. It looks like a battleground. Destroyed. I still can’t understand how this can be an acceptable way of doing forestry.

The forest today was less dominated by pine and spruce than yesterday. Deciduous forests in their most beautiful fresh leaf buds, and flowering anemones.

The afternoon was sunny but windy. I stopped in a woodland pasture, thinking I could lie down and read and enjoy the sun for a while. The sun was hot, but the air was cold, and I couldn’t manage to find a way to balance these. So I walked onwards.

I met a slow worm on the path. It was just laying there, looking like a pine root and being equally motionless. I thought that maybe it is named “slow worm” because it is slow, but apparently that is not the case.

It did the tongue-flicking thing that snakes and lizards do in the movies, but I didn’t manage to capture that in a photo.

I’ve been sharing the trail with a young guy who started stage 23 at the same time with me, and has been walking roughly the same distance as me both days. I walked past him during his lunch break; then half an hour later he walked past me on mine.

I’m an asocial hiker. I’m not out there to meet people and share stories. I’d rather not share my camping site with others, if possible. There are only so many places where you can stop for the night, though – even with a tent you do need some flat ground at least. He didn’t have one, as far as I could see, so I could guess where he’d end up for the night, and made sure to stop some ways away from the hut (yesterday) and shelter (today) where he was staying.