Hiking in Sörmlandsleden-Sweden

First we had to get out of Stockholm. On the small map below you can see where Stockholm.

Sörmlandsleden is in the south west of Stockholm. It is a quite area calm place with awesome nature. The whole three days we met only about 5 people and passed one small (really small) town. To get there we had to catch the train. It took about 1 hour and it wasn't too expansive. We jumped out of the train in Katrineholm (on the left middle side of the map). From there our track started. All over you can walk for ages, we picked out the part between Katrineholm and Djurpark (south of Katrineholm, north of Norrköping). All the red dots with numbers are stages of the track, in between there are shelters and sometimes huts (the shelters are for free, you have to book the huts).

in Katrineholm at the train station

We jumped out of the train and looked around to find something which would lead us to the track but there wasn't anything. Even the people of the town didn't know where we should go. After one hour in Katrineholm and a 5 km walk on a big road we reached the forest with the track.

in the woods

It was good to be back in the woods after doing that stuff often in New Zealand. It is difficult to explain the feeling but walking and being alone in the nature is fantastic.

me in the woods

get fresh water from a spring

We thought we are alone (well, what should you think if you don't see anybody for ages) but suddenly we saw a big truck for cutting down the trees.

After about 6 hours of hiking we looked out for a shelter (on the map there where some symbols for shelters). We weren't sure where the next one would be and so we decided to have our camp outside tonight. Well, this is normally not a problem, but it was eastern and we hadn't a tent. We were damn lucky that the weather was so nice, we had about 20 degrees, no rain and the sun was shining. Our camp side was next to an lake.

We knew that it might be cold tonight and what do you do if it is cold: A fire. Well, it makes also a lot of fun to have a fire outside in the nature and enjoy that. If you want to have a campfire you need wood. This isn't a problem in Sweden, there are shitloads. A little problem was the length of the wood, we didn't brought a motor saw and so we developed our own "cutting smaller technology". This technology was simple: get some dry old dead wood out of the forest, lift it up and throw it down.

After at least half an hour of work we started the fire (we had a small hill of fire wood, in the morning nothing was left).

It was a awesome night. Sometimes we could hear animals but we couldn't figure out which one it is. We talked about a lot, then we didn't talked and enjoyed the silence.

We slept the whole nigh outside, that was pretty cool. Sometimes we could hear different noise.

Hiking in Sörmlandsleden

19.4.03 3 days hiking over eastern