The diesel needs to get going

After my half rest day yesterday – I walked from my palace shelter to the beach and the harbor and back, about 13 kilometers – I plan to leave early. Wrong. Of course, I can’t manage that at all. It’s not until eleven that I finally get moving and finally head out. Luckily, it stays light for a long time and I function like a diesel: slow to start, but once I’m walking, I really walk.

More people than expected

The south of Norway is beautiful. Wooden houses with all sorts of decorations, rolling fields, forests, flowers, huge rock formations, and views everywhere. But there’s also a downside to all that beauty: there are more people living here than I expected. And that turns out to be a problem.

Wild camping, not always simple

Wild camping is allowed almost everywhere in Norway, as long as you stay 150 meters away from houses. Sounds easy, until you notice that there’s a house popping up around every corner. They are spaced far apart, but 150 meters is still quite a distance. Furthermore, you cannot camp on farmland, and the forests need to have a flat area without rocks. Suddenly, I miss the abundance of shelters in Denmark, as I thought I could easily set up my tent here.

Back in the Iron Age

Not long after leaving, I come across Istrehågan, one of the most impressive and well-preserved ancient burial fields from the Iron Age (!), that is, around 400 – 600 AD. Among the enormous stone arrangements lie the remains of two stone ships. One of them is more than twenty meters long. I stand in it and then you really realize how long that is. For a moment, I imagine myself in that time and try to think about how people lived back then and what happened in this place. Really interesting.

Took too long to get going

I linger there for hours, writing and eating at the nearby picnic table, chatting with the people maintaining the area. They are busy mowing the grass around the stones, taking great care not to damage anything. Perhaps I stay a bit too long. Later in the day, I find out that my route is incorrect.

Route problems

The version I downloaded two years ago on Komoot turns out to differ from the current route on Maps.me. And I based my potential camping spots on that old route. Stubborn as I am, I still follow the old route. And that was a bad idea, although I don’t know if I would have even found a camping spot on the other route. I must conquer waist-high grass, mud, swamp, and barely visible paths. It’s terrible and exhausting, but I can’t turn back, as there’s a crossing with a ferry on the new route, and it no longer operates at this time in the evening.

Unable to find a wild camping spot

I then spend almost an hour searching for a wild camping spot. Eventually, I find one and within two minutes, I also discover two ticks, even though I had completely doused myself with repellent in that tall grass, a favored habitat for ticks. This doesn’t feel good. I pack everything back up and decide to continue on to a shelter. Quite a distance away, but this isn’t going to work.

Celebrating too soon

The reward follows later. The route changes into a beautiful nature area along the water. I regain energy and the kilometers fly by. When my app indicates that I only have 700 meters left, I cheer out loud, but that was much too early to celebrate… Those last 700 meters take me over half an hour of climbing, falling, and getting back up. Steep rocks, barely visible paths, and a shelter that is extraordinarily well hidden. But eventually, I do see them: two spacious shelters, tucked away in the forest.

From eleven to eleven and then into the mosquito net

It is now eleven o’clock in the evening, fortunately still light and I have 36 kilometers behind me. The question of where I would sleep tonight has occupied my mind all day. Now I finally know. Although it’s not without its challenges, because for the first time I’m bothered by mosquitoes. The water is not so far away. Camping around the hut is not possible, it’s all rocks, so I hang my tent in the shelter like a sort of mosquito net. They won’t get me. And man, am I sleeping well!

Overnight stay: Melsomvik