The studentflak tradition involves a lot of spilled and sprayed beer and other beverages these days. At some point the students realized that this is no good for party clothes, or even ordinary clothes, and now there are special coveralls for wearing on the flak. These aren’t traditional student coveralls (which are actual pieces of clothing) – they’re more like plastic protective gear.

White is boring, of course, so another tradition that has emerges is spray painting the coveralls. Ingrid and her friends had a coverall painting party in our back garden.

A mama deer with her two babies was in the neighbourhood. I first saw them in the garden next to ours. Mama deer jumped over the fence and didn’t quite seem to understand that the babies wouldn’t be able to do that. One of the babies found the opening under the fence that the cats use; the other one stayed on the other side. Mama deer just went on with the one baby and didn’t seem too concerned about the other one. Hopefully they’ll catch up later.

I planted a peony in 2021. It’s been failing to thrive since then. Every season I’ve been mildly surprised to see it come up again. I bought a backup peony last year because I’d mostly given up hope of the first one ever properly taking off.

This year it gave me a flower! Maybe it was doing better under the surface than I thought.

National day cake by Ingrid.

Now that the old planting boxes are gone, and the flat section of the garden is presentable enough to host Ingrid’s graduation party, I’m back working on the planting towards the street. The steel edging has been waiting for me since November. Today I got it in place.

I’ve got a cubic metre of new soil waiting for me, to replace the grass sod I cut away.

Nysse was obsessed with trying to get in under the pallet that the bag of soil was delivered on. Some small creature must be hiding under it.

Gymnasium graduation season is upon us. Truck bed parties (studentflak) which involve lots of beer and screaming and squealing passed by the Active Solution office yesterday, and the Sortera office today.

There must be some school very close to us – we went out to eat our lunch on the quay, and there were clumps of students with their families everywhere. And traces of inebriated celebration.

I was afraid I’d have to carry my bicycle across this field of broken bottles in the evening, but by then, someone had cleared away all traces of the party.

Got the last pieces of the planting boxes removed. Found another layer of geotextile under one of them. All grown through with roots, difficult to detach, but the material has not degraded at all.

A typical spring in Sörmland is a gentle upwelling of water, protected by a concrete ring and a wooden lid. There’s sand and gravel at the bottom to filter the water. Often, but not always, there’s a dipper lying around. The water is usually right at ground level, so the ground around the spring is all muddy.

Sometimes the water is further down. On this hike, one of the marked springs was an actual well, with a tiny baby bucket on a piece of rope.

Very rarely there’s a water pump. Seeing this one made me wonder how old it is (looks old) and if manual water pumps like this are still being made and produced. They are, and the ones from reputable manufacturers cost about 5000-6000 SEK. You can also buy just the above-ground parts and install them as a decorative item; there’s a market for that.

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: Fagerö to Forssjö, stages 29, 28 and 27, for a total of 26 km.

Leaving the wilder parts of Sörmland behind me and getting closer to more inhabited areas around Katrineholm. The past two days I’ve seen maybe two or three people each day, but today I met several. Around me there were roads and farmland, and not just forest.

Right next to the small road that the trail was following, where it passed close to a lake, some kind local person had set up a picnic area. There were even fresh cut flowers in a vase. My snack breaks are not usually as pretty as this. It was quite windy, though, so I walked on.

Speaking of stopping for meals, and my troubles finding places for it due to rocks and roots and tree stumps, it was suggested to me that I could just sit on the tree stumps. Like, clearly I am an idiot who cannot see what is in front of me, and clearly that person with their very urban habits, who hasn’t been in a forest in decades, knows much better than me how I should be behaving outdoors.

For the record, tree stumps in the wild are not like those in your garden or in a picnic area. They do not look like tree stumps do in picture books, or in stock photos. They are not dry, flat, even, and just wide enough for your bottom. This is what a real-life tree stump in the forest can look like: jagged, uneven, half-rotten. Or they can be a hands-breadth across, so you could at best fit half of one of your buttocks on them. Either way, not something you want to sit on.

The closer I got to Katrineholm, the more clear-cut areas there were, just like on my previous hike when I approached Katrineholm from the other side. Is it an accident of timing, all the forests here reaching harvestable maturity at the same time, or something else? Unpleasant, in any case.

More clear-cut ground in the rough area where I had hoped to stop for the night, at the end of stage 28. Not much to do, other than keep going. I ended up walking 26 kilometres today, which is the longest I’ve ever done while carrying a tent and everything. It was light outside, the weather was good, the ground tent-unfriendly everywhere, and given the choice between stopping and going, going remained the better option for a long while.

I was less tired and sore this time than during my previous hike. Even though that one was just a long weekend, and an entire month has passed, I’m still feeling the benefits. And I’d had two days of warm-up, so all my muscles were in good shape. The part that got tired were my feet. Training doesn’t seem to help – after a full day of walking, the soles of my feet just get sore. Proper sit-down stops, even taking my boots and socks off, kept me going, all the way to Forssjö. The map promised a lakeside beach in Forssjö, and if that were to turn out not tent-friendly then at the very least there’s always some flat, grassy no-mans-land on the outskirts of a town.

Forssjö is apparently also where the local timber ends up.

The map also promised a 24-hour grocery shop in Forssjö, where, I hoped, I could find some way to charge my phone battery. The shop turned out to be an unmanned one – which I rather should have expected. Not a problem, register for the app with the last dregs of charge on my phone, and get in. But inside the shop there were no visible power outlets except the two used for the self-checkout computer and some other electronics. So, no charging. I did get an ice cream and a lemonade, though.

So I headed for a likely-looking area on lake shore to set up my tent. The last house on the edge of town had its door open, so I knocked and asked if I could charge my phone. It’s always worked out well for me when I’ve needed to top up drinking water, after all. It worked out equally well here – I left my phone charging in their hallway while I set up camp and made dinner, and got it back charged later. Thank you, kind stranger.

I ended up camping next to a harbour for small fishing boats.

Wildlife today: Hare. Roe deer with two kids. A small herd of fallow deer. A pair of cranes of some sort, glimpsed through the trees.