Feeling lethargic but restless. Went out for a walk on Järvafältet, hoping to see some signs of spring, but it was all cold and dead. Ice on the lakeside wetlands, ice on the roadside ditches.

The lake there is a popular landing place for migrating birds, but it was still too early for those: all I saw was a few geese and two cranes in flight. And crows.

The benefits of working from home, continued: when I see that it is sunny outside in the afternoon, I can just decide to “pack up and go home” and then go out for a long walk, with no advance planning. And be lucky enough to find the year’s first little stand of blue anemone in an otherwise drab and dead-looking forest.

One of the best places for an afternoon walk in the sun is the cliffs near Kyrkhamn and Gåseborg. They face lake Mälaren on its east side and they are only sparsely wooded, so there are plenty of wide open views towards the lake in the west.

Kyrkhamn is also one of Stockholm’s quietest spots. The web site of Stockholm city has a guide to the city’s quiet places. There are no large roads nearby, and to one side of course there is only the lake. At this time of the year there are no noisy boats on the lake either.

There was also very little birdsong. Pine forests tend to be quiet; I guess not many songbirds like them. But the area near Gåseborg had more shrubs and deciduous trees, and some noisy blue tits, as well as some others I didn’t recognize by their sounds.

Last day. We’re taking a train to Stockholm in the afternoon, but squeezed in a few hours of skiing in the morning. As usual, the slopes are very empty on switchover days (weekends) which makes for extra pleasant skiing. Just look at these empty slopes! There’s barely anyone there!

As usual, I’m a much better skier when I have the slope all for myself. I don’t have to think about where other people are and where they might be going. I can get into a flow and just turn. Swish, swish, swish.

I liked Åre. But then again I’ve liked all the other ski resorts we’ve been to as well.

Åre is larger than most ski resorts in Sweden, with more pistes to choose from. For everyone except Ingrid, that wide choice doesn’t matter much – we won’t use the red or black runs anyway. Mostly what we want is a variety of blue slopes. Our excursions to the plateau and the peak were fun, though.

I was afraid that it might feel too large, and since it’s very well-known, that it would be crowded. But it was no more crowded than any of the other places we’ve been to. It did feel a little bit more commercial and less familiar than e.g. Kläppen, where all the lift attendants always said hi and high-fived the kids.

One thing that really impressed me in Åre was food. The quality of food was really good in all the restaurants where we ate, and the range of vegetarian options much wider than what I’ve seen in other ski resorts. I remember hopelessly alternating between pizza and the same boring halloumi burger every single day for a week in Idre, and the one and only dinner option there was a cheap, greasy pizza and kebab joint. Here, too, most restaurants had a vegetarian burger on the menu – but all had some other vegetarian choices as well, and even the burgers varied. I can survive on dull food of course, but I’m much happier if I get tasty, varied food.

Another beautiful but cold day, and we made another outing to the top.

Skiing from here to there involves one really steep red run. It’s so steep and icy that when I reached it last time I was uncertain whether I would be able to ski it at all. I was very sure that Adrian wouldn’t be able to do it. Instead we took the free ski bus to the cable car station, queued for a while and took the cable car straight to the top. Very convenient.

At the top (which is not technically the top of the mountain but I’m going to call it the top anyway) everything is encrusted with snow. The cable car station doorway, all the buildings, the signposts, the cables. It looks almost surreal.

From the top it’s mostly nice, gentle, long ski routes down. Pure pleasure and sightseeing!

A day or two before our trip, I checked the weather report for Åre and packed accordingly. The weather forecast was way off target, both fortunately and unfortunately. The forecast promised temperatures just around freezing, and clouds all the time. Instead we have temperatures well below &ndash,10°C, and much more blue skies and sunshine than I had hoped.

Yesterday the cold didn’t bother me. Today by midmorning I was so cold I had to go back inside and double up on all my layers. Double polar fleeces, double leggings, double wool socks. Double layers on my hands I already had – I wear merino wool liner gloves inside my mittens so that I can take off the mittens (for taking photos, for example) and not immediately feel like my fingers will fall off in the cold.

In the afternoon we stopped at a piste-side café for a hot drink. Does the water in the vases look cloudy? That’s because it’s frozen. The tulip stems are encased in lumps of ice. But we’re out of the wind, and the hot drink is hot, so that’s all right.

Adrian meanwhile wasn’t bothered by the cold at all. He’s like a walking nuclear reactor.

He’s still bravely practicing the snowboard. I was a bit skeptical and thought that he would probably give up after a few days. But he keeps at it, not just during the lessons, and he’s learning fast. He is already connecting his turns and getting some flow going.

A cold morning (–14°C); slightly less cold during the day.

The Björnen area suits us very well, with its variety of blue runs. Even when we’ve ventured further away during the day, late in the afternoon while Adrian has his snowboard lesson (and Eric goes home for the day) Ingrid and I just go up and down the Järven lift and its blue runs. They’re very pleasant: wide, curved, wooded, not so steep that they get icy. And with beautiful views!

The Järven lift is close to a lot of housing, so its queue fills up in the afternoon with people heading “home”. But because they are heading home, the runs down from this lift can be nearly empty. I’ve skied down here several times without seeing a single other person.

Most lifts here open a “singles queue” to one side when the main queue grows long, to make sure that any free seats get filled and the lift runs at maximum capacity. These queues always move much faster than the main ones. Especially with the larger chairlifts we’ve now learned to always head straight for the singles queue, even when it looks longer than the main queue.

After two gray days it was bright and sunny today and very little wind, so I wanted to head up to the higher slopes. See some views, maybe take some photos.

Getting from Björnen (at the far right end of the piste map) to the pistes near the peak of Åreskutan (at the far left of the piste map) and then back again took me and Ingrid effectively all day. We were not the only skiers heading in that direction and the lift queues ate up a lot of time.

We did get some wonderful views up there. And the slopes were quite to my taste. The map marks them as ski routes rather than pistes – they’re relatively long, narrow and gentle. They’re great for just gliding along and taking in the views.

The slopes were not crowded but the restaurants on that side of the resort were all completely packed. At one place the waiting time for a table was over an hour. So I didn’t enjoy all the fabulous views as much as I might have because towards the end I was just so hungry.

Meanwhile Adrian and Eric stayed in Björnen all day. Adrian has decided to learn snowboarding and is taking lessons, but it means he’s effectively a total beginner on the slopes again and can only manage the gentlest inclines at the slowest pace.

I’d like to see those views from the plateau again, and show them to Eric and Adrian as well. I’m thinking of going back up there another day, maybe on a day with less beautiful weather and therefore fewer people. And with an earlier start and a more efficient plan.

The weather was much less windy today, and we were all much less tired, so we enjoyed our skiing a lot more. We explored new lifts and pistes, but generally still stayed in the Björnen side of Åre. The upper areas were still closed due to high winds for a big part of the day, so we couldn’t ski to blue pistes on the other side of the mountain. There are shuttle buses but it didn’t seem worth the effort when the blue pistes on this side were so nice. Especially late in the afternoon when the sun came out, and the lifts and pistes emptied.

We arrived in Åre at 7 in the morning. After a breakfast at the train station, our first priority was changing clothes. We travelled in clothes suitable for Stockholm where the temperature was an unseasonally warm +5°C. Here in Åre we were met by winter, closer to what Swedish winter is supposed to be: the temperature is below freezing, it is snowing, and the wind has a real bite.

Shuttle buses took us to the Björnen area where we picked up our equipment and left our luggage. Then we were ready for the slopes.

The wind remained strong and unpleasant most of the day and the skies were gray and heavy. The lifts to the upper slopes were closed and we probably wouldn’t have wanted to be up there anyway. So we stayed in the lower slopes around Björnen.

By lunchtime the kids were already tired. The skiing was nicer in the afternoon and we got some beautiful moments of sunshine. But after last night’s short sleep we felt quite done by around 15.

Today was another unbelievably warm and bright Sunday, so I went for a walk again. On my own this time. I took the train to Jakobsberg, walked to Säby gård, and then made a big and crooked circle around most of Järvafältet. That’s another good thing about clear skies: I can use the sun for navigation. I could simply head roughly north for a good while without having to look at any maps.

Järvafältet is large enough to be quite varied. There are few small lakes: two are shallow and reedy and almost more mud flat than lake; a third one is more rocky. There is plenty of the usual spruce and pine forest with granite outcroppings, plenty of moss and blueberry bushes. There are some deciduous forests. There are small heritage farms, and riding schools. There are wide, even paths that are good enough for city strollers, narrower riding trails, bumpy trails mostly used by mountain bikes, and everything in between.

I walked for four hours and got some of all of that. The narrow, hilly, rocky paths are empty and quiet. The wide, even paths are naturally more crowded, but where they’re not, they make for peaceful, meditative walking.