After Kungsleden

After finishing I stayed in Sweden for another week and a half. I spend time with Alex a friend I met in New Zealand. We hiked for about 5 weeks together with two others on Te Araroa. He lives in South Sweden, but Kungsleden is still very far North. So the first challenge was getting south. Either by 16-hour bus journey with multiple transfers or my best option getting a lift from the Dutch couple I met three days ago. Extremely lucky I saw Maarten and Sabiene when I was on my way to the little museum. They were still happy to offer me a ride. So I raced down to pack my stuff. The ride to Uppsala still took 2 days, but the company was great and in the Netherlands, I went to visit them again.

In Uppsala Alex picked me upp. We spent a few days at his childhood home. Where I felt like a true Swedish person picking blueberries and mushrooms (with guidance from Alex). The only thing lacking was the language. I could speak some Swedish but the conversations between Alex and his mom were lost on me.

I bought trail running shoes and after a few days, we headed in his van to the Norwegian mountains to start my trail running journey. Alex is already a pro with 8 months of trail running in Spain.

The trail run was a lot of fun. Depending on the elevation I walked more or less. The links to the strava activities are here:

The running didn’t take all day, so back in the van we played some cards, and ate a lot of food. With the main dish being pasta. Easy life, but with still a lot of rain, I went home a little earlier. But it was a good decision as I still needed to organise a lot before I left for my long-long travel. My last night was celebrated with pizza and I couldn’t resist getting the large one!