Mistakes were made

So, as the title of this blog may hint, things didn’t go exactly as planned, on my recent trip to Sweden. And when I say things didn’t go as planned, what I really mean is, that it was a completely shitty trip. Don’t get me wrong, the Swedish landscape, and the route along the path “Skåneleden” was amazing and beautiful. The shitty part all comes down to me, not being well prepared enough.

Let’s start with the main source of my problems with the trip, the tent itself.

The tent I packed for the trip, was the Wolf Camper Grossamer I, because it was light, and could be packed quite small. I needed it to be quite small, because my backpack didn't allow for a bigger tent. I was hoping for clear nice summer weather, and only thought that I needed to sleep in the tent, I was completely wrong. Each night was pretty windy and rainy, so I was pretty much confined to the tent, from around 6 pm to I went to sleep. It added up to a lot of hours, just laying down on the back staring at the roof of the tent. It will definitely be the last trip with the Grossamer I.

For future trips, comfort will have a weigh higher in my decision on which tent to bring, and I will gladly carry a larger two-person tent, with room to sit up, and read during the evenings. With all the rain I got during the trip, my shoes was completely drenched throughout the whole trip, and not being able to put them “outside” in a front tent, is also a big bummer. Having your soaked shoes, right beside your sleeping bag isn’t ideal.

The last issue with the Grossamer I was, that no matter how I adjusted the tent, wind came right in from the bottom of the tent, which resulted in a cold night with a constant draft.

Jumping along to the next issue, and a thing I kinda already knew beforehand - the problem with my small backpack, simply being too small. Maybe I was a bit naive, in believing that it would be alright with only a 35 liter backpack, but it was packed to the rim. With the sleeping bag and the inflatable mat taking up, almost all the space in the big compartment - leaving me with the tiniest space for the rest of my necessities. Which resulted in me leaving things at home, just because I couldn’t find the space for it (like for example an extra pair of footwear, just a light pair of trainers, in case my hiking shoes gets completely soaked).

The Fjällräven Friluft 35 is an absolute beast of a bag, and it fits my back perfectly, but I really pushed it to its limits during this trip. The Friluft 35 truly is the greatest companion for a weekend trip, if you don’t have to pack a sleeping bag and an inflatable mat. The next backpack I will be looking for is a 50-65 liter alternative, for future trips like this one.

The weather being an issue, is something that’s almost impossible to plan ahead, other than pack for the worst, and hope for the best. If it was an option to push the trip a week, maybe that would have been ideal, but it wasn’t an option this time. Without a doubt one of the main attractions for me along the route to Helsingborg, was the closed Barsebäck nuclear power plant, and the path I was following, normally passes by quite closely, or as closely as one can get to the power plant. But there was a huge problem, just before getting close to the power plant, the skies opened up, and the rain came pouring down, with heavy rain. If you follow the marked path, just before reaching the closest view point - you need to cross 3 different fields. These fields were fenced off with barbed wire, but there was a set of stairs over the fences for people to get across. The last set of stairs on the other hand were placed wrong, and a completely new fence was placed closing the path off. There were no other options, than to turn around and find another way around the fields.

In the planning fase, I wanted to give myself the option of sleeping in shelters along the trip. I looked at the map https://vindskyddskartan.se/en/#google_vignette for places with shelters, but the reality was different. According to the map, there was supposed to be a shelter along Saxtorpskogen but there was none, and again at Rydebäck, there was supposed to be one, but wasn't.

For my next trip I need to find another solution for keeping my camera bag waterproof. I had a simple rain cover over it, but in the end - the rain was too powerful, and it ended costing me, one of my analog cameras (the Pentax Espio 115), to water damage.

All in all I made a lot of mistakes, and it really made the trip into a shitty one. But I guess nothing isn't so bad, that it ain’t good for something. That something being me getting a lot of experience and learning a lot, so the next trip hopefully will be better.

You can see a whole video of my trip over at my YouTube channel @friskluft

If you have any questions, or just want to give me any feedback, feel free to write below.