My Stockholm-themed embroidery has been finished, more or less, since a burst of concerted effort ahead of the workshop at the end of March. Since then I’ve been working with the printed fabrics we made in that workshop, and the Stockholm piece has been languishing in a bag.

The embroidery club has its last session for the season in two weeks, and we vaguely discussed that we should bring the works we’ve finished this season, show them off a little bit.

Realizing that I haven’t actually finished anything, I set myself a new deadline. I will finish mounting the Stockholm piece, and I will make an effort to finish and mount the green prints plus organza series as well.

Step one: block and stretch the piece. It turns out that, even though I had a grid to work off, it’s somehow become slanted nevertheless. Fitting it into a rectangular frame like this would be difficult.

Thus, step zero point five: add a narrow wedge of bushes and walls and water to the edge to square it off. It doesn’t blend in 100%, especially the shadow on the water, but nobody’s going to be looking that closely at the edges.

Once a month or so I step into a thrift shop. Usually because I’m looking for interesting fabrics, or maybe towels, or cast iron pots or something. There are so many vintage linen towels and tablecloths still in circulation.

Most of the clothes in these shops are far too boring for my taste. Too much plain monochrome cheap cotton and polyester. But sometimes I’m lucky and I find good stuff that has been passed by by others because of minor damage. Reason enough for most people to donate the garment; an opportunity for someone like me who actually enjoys mending. Today I found a super soft knitted sweater by Tiger of Sweden, 100% wool. It must have cost at least 2000 SEK new, but was now priced at 150 SEK because of a small hole at one shoulder. A linen mix summer jacket, also for 150 kr, because of a mis-sewn sleeve seam that makes the lining pull at the outer material.

And, yes, another vintage linen tablecloth. Ingrid’s graduation party is coming up. We’ll be renting extra furniture to cater for all the guests, and the somewhat cheap-looking folding tables will need smartening up.

Half of our fridge door is covered in marketing leaflets that Ingrid has been receiving from universities. They all want her to study Industrial Engineering and Management. That’s a programme combining business and economics (which, together with law, has been the focus of Ingrid’s high school or gymnasium studies) with engineering. There’s a looming shortage of engineering graduates in Sweden in the coming decades, so I guess schools are now trying to push suitable students from other areas towards engineering.

The first few were flattering – commenting on her excellent results on the general university admission test – but didn’t affect her more than that. But as they kept piling up, she started vacillating. What if they’re right? What if that would be a good move? Looking back, though, the only STEM subject that she’s enjoyed at school is maths. Chemistry, physics, technology – mostly “eeuw, I really don’t want more of that”. Law, business, psychology, philosophy – “yes please”.

She’s now applying for a paid trainee programme for business students considering engineering, because why not, but I’d be surprised if her future lay in engineering.

(Actual university studies are two years off for her, because she’ll be doing 15 months of military service starting next March. The trainee programme would be a time-filler for this autumn.)

It looks like spring, but doesn’t feel like it. There green things everywhere and cherry trees blossoming, but the temperatures rarely reach even +10°C, so it’s hats and gloves and warm coats all the way still.

Ingrid’s class had their studentskiva today. It’s a dinner for the graduating students and their parents, that turns into a normal teenage party after the dinner ends and the parents leave. The seating plan had us sitting next to the families of Ingrid’s boyfriend and another close friend of theirs, so we had good company all evening.

This was nice. I don’t often have reason to dress up, and there’s a definite shortage of dinner parties in my life.

Ingrid looking all grown-up and elegant.

I’m still low-key amazed by how much better I sleep without a snoring bed partner. Since the beginning of the year, I am naturally waking up earlier and earlier without any effort. A decision, yes: when I wake up around 6 in the morning, I could decide to laze around and doze for another while, but I decide not to. But not an effort. I wake up alert and rested.

Initially I had the alarm set for 7 so I could wake Adrian for school. Then I started waking up before the alarm. Now I have it set for 6:30, just for peace of mind so there’s no risk of oversleeping, but I’m almost always up earlier than that.

I can be packed and dressed and ready to leave for work shortly after 7. And that’s after also having emptied the dishwasher, folded the laundry and watered the plants.

Or I can have a lazy morning and read the newspaper and scroll reddit and still be ready to start my day in the home office at 7.

The snore-free bedroom may not explain all of it, but it certainly does feel like my divorce has given me an extra hour and a half of time every day. That’s enough to fully compensate for the free time I “lost” by switching to working full time instead of 80%. Not bad.

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.

Sörmlandsleden. Hälleforsnäs train station to Svalboviken, 18 km.

After a few kilometres skirting the edges of Hälleforsnäs I got to where I left off last time, by the pretty wetlands of Bruksdammen.

From there on it was pretty typical Sörmland. Rocky pine forests, mossy spruce forests, small lakes.

The first day of a hike, I’m usually not all the way present. I can’t help thinking about kilometres and hours, and kilometres per hour. Am I taking too many breaks? Am I walking fast enough? Am I eating enough? It takes time for the mind to switch over to proper hiking mode.

Some awareness of where I am on the map is good, though, and a rough estimate of how fast I walk on average. It’s nice to be able to know that I’ll be reaching a lake in less than an hour, so I can snack on some dried fruit for now and keep walking, and stop for a proper break in a place with a nice view.

Forestry operations were going on near the trail. There was noise of heavy machinery very close to where I walked, even though today is a public holiday. They’d utilized the clear spaces of the trail itself to put down their loads, which I found rather annoying. But I guess it’s very temporary.

When I felt that it was time to stop for the night, I struggled to find a good stopping place. There was this grassy lakeside beach, looked rather nice, but there was a large road right behind me. I carry earplugs (always!) so I’m sure I could have slept here nevertheless, but it just didn’t feel right. I don’t want to start my day with the noise of cars. So I walked onwards.

The last kilometre or two were not fun. I was tired, and more hungry than I realized. If there had been forest around me, I would have found some flattish spot, but instead I walked past large clear-cut areas, and there’s nowhere to put up a tent in this.

I got past them, back into normal forest again, and put up my tent absolutely in the middle of nowhere. No other people, no noise other than night birds. Geese are loud.