TS Day 103

Hestra - Sävsjön shelter

Via Norlida, Arnåsholm

Wednesday 20 October 2021

When I woke up, I was tired (no shit). I didn't get up straight away, but fairly soon anyway. Had a sandwhich breakfast, and ate a Billys pizza that I was meant to eat yesterday. Then around 9 I cleaned my room and put my tent together again and packed it. I think that I even managed to fully charge all my electronics tonight, which I'm really impressed by.

I had tried all morning to mentally prepare for an entire day with rain, so I started with my poncho on. Geez, it took forever to get it on!

Instead of following Gislavedsleden and/or Via Suecia this morning, I followed an old train embarkment again. What I didn't know was that they had put asphalt on it and made it a bike road, so it was quite tough for my feet. For 7 km I followed this road, passing Norlida and a sign saying not to go into the forest because the area was contaminated 😳 Uuuh, okay.

After passing Remmabäcken, I reached Hägnalian shelter. Here I sat down for a break. That got a little longer than planned, but Peter Bergström wrote to me and he is going to join me in a few days, yay!

Other than that, I tried to not use my phone other than for directions that day, to save battery. I don't know when I can charge my electronics next time. Which of course worked, but made the day even slower than usual and it felt like it would never end.

I followed Gislavedsleden up onto Högåsen where I tried finding a geocache, but couldn't find it. While I was in this area, I heard, for hours, what sounded like military airplanes flying back and forth above me. Since the sky was just a compact whiteness, I couldn't see anything. It was really loud. Then I walked past Snollsbo and N Våthult. After passing Loftsgården I reached a fence I couldn't get through, but Via Suecia was going through it, so I had to find a way around. I took a path that led me towards the power plant, but it was tricky to follow and didn't go exactly the way it was painted on the map. It turned into a forest road and finally, I made my way out onto the road. It was just a short way along the road, but there was lots of traffic and not a lot of sight so I had to walk down into the ditch several times. I was glad when I reached the forest road. This road felt like it would never end though. I walked on and on, sometimes on Gislavedsleden and sometimes not. By Björkelem it was getting dark, so I stopped to put on my reflective vest and headlamp. I also took off my poncho, because for the past couple of hours it hadn't rained! Yay! So I was almost dry again. This was a nice surprise, because I had really thought it would constantly rain all day, and it had, until then. So I kept going without it. The walk in the dark felt eternally long, and I was battling with illusions. I'm not afraid of the dark (I think?) and it has never been an issue, but today I really looked for things everywhere and just generally felt uneasy. I had to talk and sing out loud, try to look at the road and not around it, and tell myself over and over that there was nothing but me there and that I'm not afraid. I don't know what it was. I'm not normally like this, and I know not to be afraid of people or animals. Yet there was something that obviously made me uneasy.

At Leabo I took a detour from Via Suecia to get to Arnåsholm, where I could fill my water bottles. It wasn't easy finding the water tap that was supposed to be there while it was dark, and it felt weird to be looking around on someone's property! But at the same time I wasn't doing anything wrong, it said on the signs along the road and on the website that the tap would be there. I finally found a water hose with water in it, and filled all of my three bottles with it.

Then I just had to push on for another 2 km. I had a thought earlier about going to another shelter 2 km even further away, but now I just felt that I wanted to pitch my tent on the first best place. Which was this one. When getting there, I wanted to have a look inside the shelter. It was covered, and a big spider sat on one side so I knew right away I didn't want to sleep there 😂 I opened it on the other side instead to just have a quick look, then began to pitch my tent. The ground was hard so it was a bit tricky, but worked well in the end. I then actually managed to talk to Lukas, redress, eat and brush my teeth before falling asleep... Perhaps because I hadn't crawled into my sleeping bag yet - it was luckily a very warm day so despite all the rain I hadn't been cold.

When I hang up after speaking to Lukas I had thought that before sleeping I would do some journaling and massage my poor legs and feet, but as always - the very moment I crawled into my sleeping bag, I fell asleep.

Today's:

Distance: 35.9 km

Start time: 10:02

End time: 19:47

Ascent: 692 m

Descent: 716 m

Snickers eaten: 3

Totals (from Grövelsjön)

Distance: 936.2 km

Ascent: 12,906 m

Descent: 13,561 m

Tent nights: 12

Shelter nights: 5

Ice cream eaten: 13

Snickers eaten: 38

Totals (from Treriksröset)

Distance: 2,368.4 km

Ascent: 46,033 m

Descent: 46,635 m

Tent nights: 54/103

Snickers eaten: 80

Ice cream eaten: 36