Sweden 2024
I guess it’s good to start at the beginning. The beginning was a Google search Ann did for beech forests in Europe. That search led us to both the Kellerwald-Edersee National Park in Germany, which was our first true bimobil trip, and to Söderåsen National Park in Sweden, which became the focal point of our first extended (3 weeks) bimobil trip. Our trip planning branched out from there, but not without a few hiccups.
Three weeks is a long time, and given our lack of real traveling in Europe to date, we were inclined to be as expansive as possible on this first extended trip. Unfortunately, a major loop that would have included an extended run through Norway had to be set aside because some idiot (read: Dan) had waited too long to inquire about getting the vehicle registrations necessary from Norway to efficiently navigate the toll system there (short ferries, tunnels and bridges). My only excuse was that I was planning our Kellerwald trip but . . . lesson learned. Then we decided that it should be no real problem, because we’ll head farther up into Sweden to check out even more sites than we’d originally considered. Those plans (three parks in central Sweden to be precise), went out the window when I checked the long range weather forecast and saw that there was going to be a 3-day snow storm starting that day, and then another storm rolling in the week after, and likely a storm rolling in around our departure date. Driving through snow was not part of the game plan. Even then, at a late date I checked one of those National Park websites and it said very plainly (in English nonetheless) - “Please understand, Winter lasts in the park until late May, often into mid-June, when Spring begins. Unless you plan to be skiing, much of the park is not accessible before late June.” We took their word for it.
So we settled on a trip to southern Sweden; more precisely, southwest Sweden. We started with Ann’s list of beech forests in Sweden, researched a couple of other national parks, dug into Sweden’s nature reserves (naturreservat) website, and even came across a couple of pins on google maps that looked worth checking out. Furthermore, given Sweden’s “Allemansrätten” (The Right of Public Access) ability to free-camp in many areas (more limited for vehicles, but possible), the only reservation we made was tickets for the ferry from Puttgarden, Germany to/from Rødbyhavn, Denmark. This was going to be a true road trip without any specific agenda other than needing to be at the respective ports on the right day.
The trip started off well. While the drive from Didam to Fehmarn, Germany was fairly long, we got an early start and there were no traffic issues along the way. We made fairly good time, even with a few rest stops. In Fehmarn, we parked in the parking area by the harbor, right next to the U-Boat Museum and a Search-And-Rescue boat on public display. We’ve found out that Germany and many other places have camperplatz areas in towns where for about $15 you can spend the night if you have a camper. It’s quite the bargain for a paid location.
The next morning found us at the port ready for a quick 45-minute hop to Denmark, where we passed the sister ferry at the mid-point of the journey.
From there, it was a nice drive through Denmark and then another hour or so until we hit Söderåsen NP. We headed right to the welcome center (fortunately open on a Sunday) and after the usual questions about favorite trails and favorite restaurants in the area, I asked about the vehicle camping guidelines (definitely not in the NP or nature reserve parking areas) to make sure I understand the rules and any suggestions she might have as to locations (given the two campgrounds in the area didn’t open until May 1). I have to hand it to Hanna, she did us right, pointing us to a parking area in the woods just at the edge of a nature reserve (but permitted to camp at), which we stayed at for multiple nights. She also let us in on the fact that at any place that has a blue sign with a white “P” and no restrictions below the sign we are allowed to park for one night (but not spread out like a camp site). Good to know, especially since we started seeing signs with various restrictions later, so understood where we could or could not stay if we wanted to.
We were set for Söderåsen! And it didn’t disappoint. Ann had read that the spring bloom generally starts in mid-April and runs through May. Everyone we met mentioned how cold it had been and that everything was blooming late this year, but we didn’t mind. The forms of beech trees were lovely, and many of the trees had their leaves just starting to spread.
Söderåsen NP is established around a rift-valley that was created when the continents of Africa and Europe collided. On our first full day there we hiked up from the valley floor, along the ridge line, and back down again to get a real feel for what the park had to offer. Not only were the trees beautiful, but the geology was interesting.
There is a well-established network of trails and, good for us given our increasing dislike of very long hikes, lots of access points. So we spent a few days exploring different areas of the park. It was, however, cold (we were glad to have brought extra cold-weather gear) and despite the fact that we got periods of sun, we also got a good bit of rain and, on a couple of occasions, snow.
The hiking was easier (and better) than at the Kellerwald, and there seemed to be a bit more diversity with running water and some swampy areas (there are a surprising amount of the latter throughout Southern Sweden).
After a few days, it was time to move on. While on the road we used Park4Night to find a place to dump our gray water tank (for free) and stopped by a farm (another €10 campsite) where we loaded up with water.
The farmer was right next to a small town, Habo, that has a very small beech forest in a town park. The park turned into a lovely photography opportunity when fog rolled in from Lake Vättern while we were photographing.
We continued our drive (after the fog burned off and we did some food shopping, and of course have Fika at a cafe) to head to a waterfall a bit north of Habo. I have to hand it to the Swedes, they are very accommodating of others coming onto their property to experience nature. As we approached a very sketchy road (per Google Maps) that was supposed to take us to a location near the falls, there was a big hand-written sign that said, in English, “Falls This Way.” Other similar signs eventually led us to a farm with a really cool barn, a honor-pay used goods shop and a parking area for vehicles, naturally labeled “Falls Parking Here.” Of course, there were more hand-written signs pointing the way to and through the trails to the falls.
On the way back to the bimobil, we ran across a forester . . . one guy, operating a machine the size of a tractor, that grabbed the tree (about a foot in diameter), cut the tree, then stripped it of all if its branches, and then cut it into about 8-foot lengths. Ann and I stood there for about 15 minutes watching him work his way down a line of trees along the trail we were hiking.
It didn’t take long until we were back on the road to our next national park. I had a hard time figuring out planning for this park and eventually understood why. It’s so difficult to access, and get around, that it is largely undeveloped - an historic anomaly for Sweden. Unfortunately, a couple of places I thought we could stay at had not opened yet, so we had to do a bit of searching, eventually finding a very wonderful campground (at campground prices) run by a wonderful couple, about 20 minutes outside the park. We needed a campground because by now it was time to do laundry and . . . laundromats are not a thing in Sweden (later in the trip we mentioned laundry with a younger Swedish couple living out of their van and they said, “We hear in the US you actually have laundry mats you can go to and wash your clothes at!”).
As for the park, Tivedens National Park is one of the most impressive parks we’ve ever been to. The landscape is stunning in its own way, much like Yosemite, Yellowstone, Bryce Canyon or Zion can move you with their own qualities. Tivedens is full of granite boulders and so very difficult to hike through, particularly at our age (when scrambling on rocks send red warning lights flashing in the back of your brain) and it’s rainy and wet.
So while the amount of real hiking we did in terms of distance was more limited than in Söderåsen NP, what we did was so rewarding. You don’t have to hike very far to be in awe.
I can definitely see us going back there again.
And to be honest, the campsite had its own photo opportunities. It was located on Lake Unden and our laundry day rewarded us with a nice afternoon and early evening photo shoot . . . even if it was cold as heck.
And the campground owners recommend we try eating at the nearby country store (“Lanthandel”). We swung by our first day out, made reservations for the next night and . . . had the best meal of the trip. The food was amazing. We even had a dessert the owner said he had prepared for the US ambassador to Sweden several years previously. Despite being a “country store” that sold things like meats, cheeses and other day-to-day food items, the little restaurant/cafe was in a class of its own.
We spent our last night at Tivedens free camping just outside the park (as I like to say, “Free is good!”), drove around to check out another part of the park the next morning, and then headed onward to start the real road-trip part of the trip. Basically, I had a bunch of points on a map (ok, on our GPS), some descriptions of the locations in my notes file, and we would decide which of the ones we wanted to stop at, and which ones to skip.
And along the way, we would stop at whatever caught our eye, because that’s another part of what a trip is all about, discovering what you don’t know. We certainly saw a lot of Swedish lakes with their boulders, lichen and trees.
Naturally, some of the nature reserves were beech forests, but others weren’t. Admittedly, the naturreservat areas are not as impressive or as large or developed as the natural parks, but some had their own qualities (albeit occasionally not real photographic qualities). Nonetheless, a nice hike in the woods is a nice hike in the woods, even if you don’t get any photographs. Particularly when a place to park for the night is located just a few dozen feet outside the naturreservat. Though it would be nice to know when you can leave the camera bag and tripod in the vehicle.
And yes, occasionally a gem of a location would come seemingly out of nowhere in a naturreservat.
So we went from place to place, occasionally skipping a location that seemed a bit too much of a climb or too out of the way, and spending the night at others. And getting used to the fact that, although Sweden is much more spread out and open than the Netherlands, the presence of man is still almost everywhere so we shouldn’t worry too much about that presence being in a landscape photograph.
As I noted, I threw in a few GPS locations for things that are a bit . . . out of the norm for us. Hey, it’s a road trip and sometimes you just gotta check things out. That led us to Ivanssons Bilskrot Bilkyrokogård (That is Ivansson’s Junkyard Car Cemetery) in Båstnäs, which was a good hour and a half out of our way, but well worth it.
The place was pretty cool. Understand, to get here you have to go down a 14km dirt road. And much to our surprise, on a Thursday nonetheless, when we arrived there were 6 visitor cars and a motorhome in addition to acres of cars. By the time we’d left, all 6 visitor cars and the motorhome had left, and had been replaced with 8 more cars and 2 motorhomes (not including us). Go figure!
Our road-trip took us just over the Sweden-Norway border where we spent the night at Ørje, Norway, again at a cheap park-out where we could dump gray water and fill up our water stores for cheap (read: free). The next morning we took a nice drive through Norway heading south to check out a waterfall at the southern end of the Norway-Swedish border.
We were a bit ahead of our rough, not-too-fixed schedule (read: through the list of gps pins we had for the area) and decided to continue onward to the Swedish coast, where we parked for a few days in a campground, again in part to do laundry (oh, and to take showers too!). It was the end of our second week on the road.
The town, Fjällbacka, is a typical Swedish sea town that was about a 1km walk from the campground. The town is famous because Ingrid Bergman owned a near-by island and used to vacation here and visit the town, so yes, we’re sure that in-season it’s a real tourist trap. But, it looked like many of the towns we drove through, especially those along the coast (inland, most of the houses are red, with fewer yellow or white houses), and are really quite lovely.
Much of that second week had been a bit stifling on the photography front. The bane of landscape photographers is bright sunlight and we had more of it than we’d hoped for. Believe it or not, we were longing for the cold, overcast skies and, if necessary, rain, we’d seen the first week of our trip. So not much real photography got done during that latter period (unfortunately).
Well-rested, we started plotting our last week’s itinerary. I had a few spots marked out along the coast as potential photo sites, but most were similar to what we had at Fjällbacka and the forecast for the coast was sunny for the whole week. So we looked inland and saw that Söderåsen NP was supposed to be partly cloudy turning to cloudy by mid-week, and decided to head back to familiar ground.
It was, in some ways familiar, but in others, it was not. It was a whole new landscape - Spring had sprung. Both in foliage and with mosquitos.
To give you an idea of how drastic the change was, below is a photograph we took our first day at Söderåsen of one of the nesting swans at Lake Skäralidsdammen. You can see a bit of color coming to the landscape and buds on the trees, but the trees are still quite barren and fully revealing their structure.
Compare that the image taken two weeks later on our return (the female is nesting off to the left of the image). So, same place but entirely different (wish we could have gone up to Tividens!).
It wasn’t just Söderåsen either, the farm fields on the way to our overnight hide-out had exploded in color as well! (And yes, I took the photo while driving. I had two . . . arms on the steering wheel though!).
Over the next few days we explored some of the areas of the park we had previously explored, as well as some others and some locations in the area around the park.
Unfortunately, the weather forecast had been wrong and we had way more sun than we were hoping for, but that didn’t stop us from getting out and occasionally pulling out the camera.
Then a holiday arrived (Ascension Day) and the park was packed (read: no available parking in the main parking area after 9:00 and lines of cars trying to find a space). We’d learned at Tivedens that Swedes take their holidays seriously and when they get a day off, like May Day (May 1) when we were there, they get out in droves. So we headed off to an obscure parking area in another part of Söderåsens to go on a nice long hike, and managed to get a few photographs in to boot. The lot was full when we returned.
As we sat in the vehicle, we discussed our options and, given the possibility that a lot of folks would take a day’s vacation to have a 4-day weekend and the park would likely be packed the next day as well, we decided to start our drive back a day early, spend the night in Denmark (again, at a cheap Caravanplatz, this time near a sailing club) and try to catch an early ferry the next morning.
The trip home went smoothly (for the most part - damn construction delays), and we arrived home a day early. Which was good, because we’d both forgotten how exhausting traveling can be, even if you’re sleeping a lot (we slept well). So an extra recovery day before starting the work-grind was appreciated. Yeah, that exhaustion feeling should be motivation for me to start exercising in preparation for the next big trips.
And you may ask what those are? Well, our friends John and Judy will be visiting us in September. We are joining them for a short jaunt to Ireland, and then they’ll stay with us to explore Holland. Then we have a photography workshop in the UK during the first week of November (Yes, the first day of the workshop is Election Day and, yes, the hotel has a bar in case I need it.). Ann and I are thinking of making a vacation of it, which would mean driving the bimobil in England and Scotland. After Sweden, I think I’m ready for it, so time to start planning!
Until then, we’ll be posting more images and stories from our Sweden trip and taking short weekend trips here in the Netherlands. Now that we’re back to traveling, we need to keep it up!