During our summer holiday this year we went to a cabin in the woods west of Trollhättan in southern Sweden. The cabin has been in Jonas’s family for many years and we have been coming there almost every year since we started dating. The cabin and the surrounding area is one of my favourite places on Earth. A perfect place to go and do absolutely nothing with absolutely no-one.
This year, amidst all of our lying around on the deck we managed to squeeze in one good hike around the nearby lake, Öresjö, and a couple of shorter trips. The lake is conveniently placed for a 30 km round-trip, with a nice break point around the half-way mark (see map below).
Some of the road is paved, most of it is gravel and at two places between the 16 and 24 km mark we had to go a little off-road in order to stay close to the lake-side.
Preparing our feet for the Japanese concrete
After walking the first 15 kilometers on an empty stomach we took a well-deserved break at Öresjö badet to enjoy our lunch packs and an ice cream. We had brought our swimming suits but it was windy, so we settled for dipping our toes in the refreshingly cold water (meanwhile all the Swedes were lying around in bikinis, seemingly overwhelmed with the heat).
Along the way we were lucky enough to stumble upon a few places that were booming with fresh chanterelles (the location of which we will of course never disclose to any living soul).
Struck a gold mine
We collected almost 500g of chanterelles(!), which resulted in some excellent pizzas, though we ended up eating most of them in the traditional way: fried on a pan with an almost shameful amount of butter.
Chanterelle pizza
We had planned on taking a second break after the last bit of off-road, but decided to push through to the cabin to get the pizzas started and enjoy a G&T in the last afternoon sun.
Unfortunately, Jonas seem to have overstrained his hip during this trip, which took about a week to pass. This probably means we need to incorporate a little more terrain walking to stabilize the joint-muscles. Hopefully, Norway will be good for that.
The two other shorter walks we took were to a nearby shelter, where we did not sleep but did end up picking a shit ton of blueberries, and a walking route along the southern tip of lake Vänern, where I ended up getting more scared of a deer than it were of me. Good thing we’re going on a zen pilgrimage, I really think I need it.
