Årsjön and Bylsjön both had gangs of ducks who were all very used to being near people. They were pretty obviously expecting to be fed. After we washed up our breakfast dishes in the lake, some snacked on our porridge scrapings.

Adrian and I went on an overnight mini hike to Tyresta (Årsjön). This late in the season, the camping area wasn’t crowded at all. The trails on the other hand were full of people, 80% of whom seemed to be carrying baskets for picking mushrooms. Seems to be this year’s hot thing.

I loved the evenings and mornings here. We had company from other walkers the first two nights, but last night it was just us. The evenings have been full of birdsong. They only stop around 21:30 and get going around 2:30 again. Thank god for earplugs.

I’m no expert on songbirds but I’m guessing blackbirds were responsible for much of the singing. I often see and hear blackbirds at home, and these sounded the same. We also heard cuckoos, which are such a nostalgic summer sound for me. We don’t get those at home.

The first night a pair of cranes flew past several times, honking so loudly that they woke Adrian. Or maybe multiple pairs who just happened to choose the same route.

There was another bird with a very distinct sound that I wasn’t familiar with. I had to Google for its sound to find out that it was a woodcock (morkulla, metskurvits). It came back every night and kept flying back and forth over the camping site, singing its odd song all the while. Crawk, crawk, crawk, tweet!

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.

We’re taking a four-day weekend and spending it camping/hiking in Tiveden. This is going to be a really leisurely weekend so all we did today was pack, drive here, set up camp and then just lounge around all evening. Cook dinner on the Trangia stove, sit in the evening sun and read, listen to the birds sing.

There’s a good chance that the national park will be chock full of people tomorrow – it’s a long weekend in May after all – but at least this place isn’t crowded. We’re camping at the Tivedstorp STF hostel. They have a camping ground, and then they have “the other camping ground” which is at the very far end of everything and if I sit facing the right way then it really feels like we’re on our own out here. But with the benefit of a road, and an outhouse, and running water within a few hundred metres’ walk.

It’s just me and Eric and Adrian. Adrian loves camping and hiking. Ingrid sort of does, but not with us. Not any more. So she gets to stay at home on her own for an entire weekend for the first time.

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.

Sörmlandsleden stage 17, back and forth, 6 + 6 km.

Today’s walk was mostly just to get out of the house. With nothing going on in life, I’ve gotten used to nothing going on and lost the habit of doing things, of planning and making things happen. Planning something feels like so much effort. So it’s a good thing that my slow-burn Sörmlandsleden project makes it so easy to get out. Just take the next stage on the list.

12 km is far from a full day of walking, but with the driving there and back and a leisurely lunch + book break in the middle, the whole outing took over 8 hours anyway. Sörmlandsleden stretches many miles away from Stockholm and the point that I have reached is currently about one and a half hour’s drive from home. And it’s only going to get further and further away. Stages 18, 19 and 21 are all just over 10 km, so they’re also doable back and forth in a single day, albeit a long one. Stage 20 I’ve walked already.

It was a very quiet walk. There was no wind and none of the rustling or whispering sounds of wind. No birdsong. No sun, with its brightness and shadows. I met a single other person on the trail. He was running and doing the same as me, back and forth, so he ran past me twice.

The ground was not as muddy as I had feared. In many places, what looked like soggy ground turned out to be still frozen. There were patches of grainy old snow here and there. The small lakes were all fully iced over, but the larger ones had open water.

I heard a black grouse sing. I didn’t know what it was; I don’t think I’ve ever heard one before. I walked closer, hoping to get a look, but it took flight. I got enough of a glimpse to see that it was like a large dark hen, which means it was some kind of grouse. Google and Fågelsång.se helped me figure out which one.

This is the inside of a hollow dead oak.

A beautiful, snowy walk on Järvafältet around Säby.

We saw quite extensive ski tracks on the fields. I didn’t know there were prepared tracks here. Tempting. I wonder if my back country skis would fit in the tracks.

The weather has finally gone from muddy to crisp so we went out geocaching again. Eric and I could and do walk for hours without any extra activities, but for Adrian geocaching makes all the difference. A boring walk turns into a game. This time we went to Järvafältet, near Akalla, and picked up eight caches there.

This part of Järvafältet is quite fun to walk around in, because it’s so scruffy and varied, but still easily walkable. There are paths everywhere, but the paths go up hills and over rocks and in between deadfalls and marshes and ditches. You have to be alert and look where you put your feet. It was a good thing the ground was frozen today – one of the caches was in the middle of a marshy area that would have been really muddy otherwise.

Adrian took care of navigation today, with only a minimum of help. He’s been learning map reading both at school (where they’ve done some basic orienteering in gym class) and with his scout group, so now he actually knows what he’s doing.

With a GPS it’s mostly enough to look at the blue track line and make sure the dark blue triangle moves towards the cache rather than away, which doesn’t take much in the way of map reading skills. But he could also use the GPS map to figure out whether we should turn left or right on the next track we hit, so he can clearly relate the map to reality. When I pointed out some contour lines on the map for him, he took a look around and concluded that the cache would be at the top of the hill.

It was good for all of us to get out of the house, but Adrian seemed to need it most. His friend M has been away during most of Christmas break so he’s been sitting around the house more than usual and really needed to move and run around for a while.

Had I been here on my own I would have stopped to take photos of the pretty patterns in the ice, but today was not a photo outing.