It took three trains and two buses and seven and a half hours and a near miss, but now I’m here, in Ottenby, at the southern end of Öland.

I nearly didn’t make it, due to my own thoughtlessness. I had to change buses in Mörbylånga. The second bus was to leave from the same stop where I got off from the first one. I had been standing there for about ten minutes, and had another minute or two to go, when I realized that the same bus stop does not necessarily mean the exact same spot – the bus stop has its other half on the other side of the road. And since my first bus left the main road to head in to Mörbylånga, and the second bus would need to drive out of Mörbylånga back to the main road… I was on the wrong side of the road. It took me a minute to jog across the road and onwards to the “same but other” stop – and the bus arrived thirty seconds later. Had my brain not woken up in time, I would have missed my only chance today to get to Ottenby and instead been stuck there in Mörbylånga.

It feels a bit like the end of the world: last stop on the bus, with an overgrown little shelter to mark its spot, and a lot of near emptiness in all directions around me.

Today was going to be a transport day only. But… I’m here, I’ve got my boots on, I have at least four hours of daylight left, and I am so close to the actual southernmost tip of the island. (The signpost says 4.5 km.) I could sit around and do nothing – or I could walk there and back.

Southern Öland is mostly limestone, thorny bushes, sheep, rocks, and the sea.

There is a lighthouse at the southern tip of Öland, called Långe Jan – apparently the tallest lighthouse in Sweden. Across the wide open landscape, it looks like I’m almost there, even though the sign says I still have 1.8 km to go.

And here it is. Tall and imposing indeed! Open for visitors, in principle, but we’re in the low season, so it had closed for the day before I even got off the bus.

Instead I explored the surroundings. Next to the lighthouse is Ottenby bird observatory, where tens of thousands of birds are caught for ringing every year, and many more are observed. Because of the location, it’s passed by many migratory birds, and the coastal meadows and shallow beaches offer them lots of food. According to the observatory’s website, more species of birds have been sighted here than anywhere else in Sweden.

For me, with no particular knowledge of birds and no binoculars, it was just a lot of birds. “Looks like a bunch of geese of some sort” and “that’s a swan” and “some kind of wader”.

It wasn’t just birds, either. On one side of the headland, a herd of seals were basking in the evening sun. I didn’t want to get too close and disturb them, but from where I was, I counted at least thirty.

As fun as this was, it was time for me to head back, if I wanted to get my tent up before the dark. Here’s a last look back at the lighthouse.

I had walked down there along the shortest path, more or less straight south from Ottenby. On my way back I headed roughly north-east, so as to end up at an STF camping site – and to see something different.

The seaside meadows on this side were like a savanna, but with hawthorn trees instead of acacias. Just like in the savannas in Africa, they get their characteristic shape from animals eating the lower branches. Hawthorns, left alone, grow into bushes. But cows eat the branches they can reach, until the hawthorn becomes a tree with a flat-bottomed crown.

Ottenby used to be a village – “by” means “village” – and the lands around it were owned by a monastery. In the 16th century, along came Gustav Vasa and reformed the church and took the lands of most monasteries in the country, including Ottenby, which became a royal farm. Other kings later brought in English sheep for breeding, and deer for hunting. There’s a deciduous forest that still has a herd of deer, reportedly all descendants of the original herd, and according to sources, King Carl XVI Gustaf still has and uses the sole hunting rights for the Ottenby Royal Farm.

I reached the camping site right at sundown, but after the reception had closed for the day. I picked a suitable-looking flat spot of grass and put up my tent anyway, and used their facilities, and will pay tomorrow.

In total I probably walked 10-12 km here in Ottenby today.

I’m all set to leave for my by now habitual autumn hike tomorrow. A bit earlier this year, and at somewhat short notice, because of all sorts of things turning up in the calendar for the coming weeks and weekends.

For years already I’ve been wanting to hike the Mörbylångaleden trail through southern Öland. I’ve seen plenty of Sörmland, and I’ve been to the Swedish fells a few times. This would be something entirely different, and all reports say it’s unique and beautiful.

It’s a five-day hike, and transport there and back is a bit tricky, too, so the whole project takes a week, which has been the sticking point for me in the past. But this year things lined up nicely at the client and I could take a week off. So the Mörbylångaleden is a go!

Due to the above-mentioned transport issues, I’ll be hiking the trail backwards compared to how it’s normally described. The officially suggested route is to start in Färjestaden, where the bridge from the mainland reaches Öland, and walk from there towards Ottenby near the southernmost tip of the island.

It does make a nice “story” this way. But getting back from Ottenby at the other end is tricky, to say the least. There is a bus, but twice a day only, and it doesn’t go on weekends at all (outside of the summer high season, which is over by now). So if I did the trail in that direction, I’d end up in Ottenby with no way home until after the weekend. But! I can take the bus there tomorrow and start walking back up the trail on Tuesday morning. By Saturday evening I’ll be back in Färjestaden with all its multitude of buses to take me home.

Maybe the experience will be less of a dramatic crescendo this way, but I’m perfectly fine with that. Plus this way I will get to walk with the sun at my back instead of in my face – an often underappreciated aspect of hike planning.

I’ve signed up for an embroidery course for this autumn, in addition to the club I attend.

The club is very much a social thing – “turn up if you want and embroider whatever you want, or don’t embroider if that’s what you feel like today”. It’s fun and pleasant, gets me out of the house, meeting new people, embroidering more than I otherwise would. But a challenge it is not.

The course sounds like it will be really interesting. Titled Svart, vitt och en färg – “black, white and one colour” – it will focus on composition and graphical design in embroidery. I was super glad to find a course with such a modern and creative approach to embroidery – so many courses focus either on techniques and stitches, or particular established, traditional embroidery styles.

Today I went shopping for all the required materials listed for the course. It was a lot. The fabrics and threads made up less than half the list; the rest was all papers and paints and pens and brushes and crafts knife and cutting board and so on. Luckily I can borrow much of the basic stuff, like pens and brushes in various sizes, from Ingrid.

Work is still being very frustrating. Killing all energy and desire to do anything. I nevertheless managed to trick myself into working out, promising myself that I could do the shortest workout I could find, but then ended up doing a 35-minute session anyway. Felt better afterwards.

Embroidery club, first session of the term. I continue on my Stockholm embroidery, which is taking an absolute eternity. I’m half-way done at most. But: still enjoying it.

Today’s photo is a close-up showing the technique I use to fill in the crowns of the trees. Random, criss-corssing small stitches, sort of like overlapping rows of very mangled herringbone stitch.

I am out of my favourite chocolate, the Friis Holm Tobago dark milk. I normally have one stash at home and one at each office, and now they’re all empty.

What’s even worse is that there’s none in the shops either. Today I asked at the chocolate store in Hötorgshallen, and apparently there were problems with the cocoa harvest this year so the chocolate production is delayed.

However will I cope? Some meals almost require a palate cleanser afterwards. Especially anything with lots of onion, or even the smallest bits of raw onion.

At least I got some nice pralines from Ölands Choklad.

Ingrid continues to learn to drive. (Have I posted about that? I think so.) Just plain driving on relatively quiet streets is not much of a challenge any more, so we have started spicing things up. Larger roads (with 60 km/h speed limits), driving late in the day when it’s getting dark (although this just happens because that’s when we have time), roads with lots of roundabouts and traffic lights. And today: parking in tight spots. Nine o’clock at night the parking lot at Coop Vinsta was rather empty, but we managed to find a place where we could pretend that there were cars everywhere and we just had to squeeze into the last free spot.

Mushrooms, from today’s Sörmlandsleden hike.

Hälleforsnäs to Hagtorp. Yesterday this stage was 16.5 km but today it took me 18.5 to walk.

First I got an extra kilometre by starting walking without checking the updated weather forecast. Yesterday, the forecast promised rain for today, but only from late morning. When I was packed up and ready to go at around 7:40, I saw the clouds but didn’t think that rain would be imminent. It started raining before I had even walked ten minutes. I started thinking about where I could find shelter, but quickly realised that the best and closest shelter was back at the camping site. So I walked back, through the rain. Gained absolutely nothing but getting thoroughly wet.

It rained for almost two hours. Luckily I had my Kindle.

Afterwards the woods were, of course, very very wet. Not so much the ground, because the soil hereabouts drains quickly, but the bushes and grasses can hold on to a lot of water. Walking through wet forest is like I’m trying to use my trousers to wipe dry all the bilberry bushes. The trousers at least dry quickly, but the water also wicks into my socks and boots, and those keep all the water inside. Yes, I could wear waterproof trousers, but I don’t like the way they feel. Unless it’s cold outside, I’d rather be a bit wet.

Today I learned that lingonberry bushes dry out first, with their waxy-leathery leaves. Bilberry bushes come in quick-drying and slow-drying varieties, because some were clearly drier than others. Bog bilberries were the slowest to dry and seemed to actively hold on to drops of water. And heather almost doesn’t get wet to begin with.

There is a locally famous “rocking boulder” a few kilometres in. Why they didn’t seize the obvious opportunity to call it a “rocking rock”, I have no idea.

I went to see it, of course, but to my disappointment, it did not rock at all, no matter how hard I pushed. Either it needs more weight, or it’s gotten jammed.

The rest of the day was pleasant, unexciting walking. More mindfulness, like yesterday. It went easier today, after all my practise.

Here’s me having bread and butter and a boiled egg for lunch. It took a good while to find a spot where I could sit down for a meal – wherever I looked, it was just wet bushes.

In the afternoon there was another surprise burst of rain. And I had again just passed a shelter, so this time I didn’t even hesitate – turned back as soon as I felt the first drop and ran back, and had my second lunch at the shelter instead of the exposed lakeside cliff I had been aiming for. Another extra kilometre gained.