{"id":21017,"date":"2025-08-07T21:56:37","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T20:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/?p=21017"},"modified":"2025-08-20T22:50:00","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T21:50:00","slug":"daily_3810_-_sat_day_1_-_svartso","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/2025\/08\/07\/daily_3810_-_sat_day_1_-_svartso\/","title":{"rendered":"Daily: 3810 – SAT day 1 – Svarts\u00f6"},"content":{"rendered":"

This whole “going back to work” thing was not very satisfying at all. Having worked all of three days now, I took a long weekend to go hiking in the Stockholm archipelago with Ingrid. (Just kidding. Ingrid has been working until now, so this was our first chance to go hiking together. And it actually worked out well with my team as well, because the project manager is still on vacation.)<\/p>\n

I’ve been wanting to see more of the archipelago for a while. But there’s so much of it that I don’t even know where to start. The Stockholm Archipelago Trail is a recent project that sort of packages the archipelago into a nice visitor-friendly format, selecting a bunch of “best of” islands, providing well-marked hiking trails on them, with online maps etc. This is exactly what I needed!<\/p>\n

Today: Svarts\u00f6. <\/p>\n

But first, getting to Svarts\u00f6. You get there by boat, either from central Stockholm or from Vaxholm. The commuter trains from Sp\u00e5nga are still on a half-hourly schedule due to engineering works, so we drove to Vaxholm. It’s just a 40-minute drive, which is less time than it would take us to get to central Stockholm.<\/p>\n

Late last night it occurred to me to check for parking, which was a good thing, because it turned out to be tricky. No long-term parking near the harbour at all. It looked like we might need to park at the very far end of Vaxholm and walk 2.5 km with our packs, on asphalt. Ouch. We were lucky and found a spot in a smaller (and more expensive) long-term parking lot, which cut this walk to a half and left us time for ice cream in a harbourside shop.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The boat ride was pretty nice. The Waxholmsbolaget boats are very comfortable – like the nicest trains, except with more space to move around. Big windows, wi-fi on board, comfy seating.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

On Svarts\u00f6 we took five minutes to check in at the hostel and then started walking. The SAT trail here is about 17 km and is a tangle of two connected loops and a few “tails” here and there. The SAT markings were very visible when they were there, but we often thought they were too few and far between.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The trail on Svarts\u00f6 is a mixture of small gravel roads between meadows and pastures, and paths through open, airy pine forest. Easy, pleasant walking.<\/p>\n


\n<\/p>\n

There were several small villages on the island, various farms scattered around, two restaurants, and a general store. We didn’t see any cars. Instead, local folks used all sorts of smaller vehicles, from cargo bikes and tricycles (electric and not) and cargo mopeds to ATVs, small tractors, and strange small car\/moped hybrids.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ingrid bathed in the sea, mostly to have done it. The water looked cold and was even colder than it looked, so her swim was very short.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We spotted a lot of edible berries on Svarts\u00f6. We counted eight: bilberries, lingonberries (not quite ripe yet), wild raspberries, stone brambles, redcurrants, damsons (not really berries but small enough to count!), sloe (far from ripe), juniper. We kept our eyes peeled for wild strawberries but didn’t find any.<\/p>\n

Raspberries were especially abundant. Wild raspberries aren’t rare in the Stockholm region, but it’s not like they’re growing everywhere, either, so we were delighted when we ran across the first good patches. Later on we actually got to a point where we could spot raspberry bushes and just walk past them.<\/p>\n

On the east side of the island we ran across the largest raspberry patch that I’ve ever seen. Metres and metres of them! Now I understand how people can pick enough wild raspberries to make jam out of them.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

More pretty meadows and pine forests on the eastern loop. We hesitated about whether to walk it or not. We had a late start on the island (only started walking around at half past two) which left us less time for completing the trail than we might have wanted. But just sitting around and doing nothing at the hostel didn’t seem like any fun at all, so we did choose to walk it all. We ended up finishing later than we had hoped and were quite tired by the end of it.<\/p>\n


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\n<\/p>\n

Dinner at Svarts\u00f6 Bistro. Outdoor seating, friendly staff, good food, and a cute little dog running around. I wish they had more comfortable chairs, though, instead of the small cafe-style seating.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My camera lens stopped working, just like for the Venice trip last year. It’s like it’s jinxed, somehow. I’m forced to rely on the camera in my phone, and I am not happy with it at all. I had really been looking forward to taking photos on this trip, and I’m stuck with a sub-par tool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This whole “going back to work” thing was not very satisfying at all. Having worked all of three days now, I took a long weekend to go hiking in the Stockholm archipelago with Ingrid. (Just kidding. Ingrid has been working until now, so this was our first chance to go hiking together. And it actually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,15,773,768],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dailies","category-ingrid_johanna","category-outdoors","category-photography-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21017"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21029,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21017\/revisions\/21029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}