More of the same (Kolmården)

 My camp at the lovely Trosa campsite.

After yesterday's gruelling re-introduction to bicycle travel I slept like a stone. One indication of this was that it had rained heavily during the night, but I have no recollection of hearing it. To my delight, the morning was clear, even sunny, and I took my time waking up, listening to the birdsong and feeling the welcome warmth of sunlight. As it turned out, birds were to be my companions today, as I spend the day crossing large forests and endless meadows full of migrating birds returning to their nesting sites in the North. For once, the sight of cranes did not make me want to cry (for some reason they almost always make me really emotional). I also saw hundreds of geese and tens of swans foraging on newly-ploughed fields, as well as my first starlings of this year, a roller and a marsh harrier. Briefly regretted not taking my binoculars this time around, then realised it is actually much nicer to see birds this way!

A children's fishing competition in Trosa.

The landscape was nicely undulating with gentle hills and a winding road until for the first part of the day. However the clear skies did not last for long and very soon i was having to put on my rain gear. The bags are all water-proof so that was not a worry but I was slightly nervous about my feet getting wet as I knew from last year's experience that no matter what kind of gore tex shoes (or socks) I have on, eventually the water will seep through. Then I remembered the advice of Piotrek, a very experienced bike tourer himself, that the only thing that works is wearing plastic bags on top of your shoes. I did just that, and although it was literally pissing down for the next hour or so am happy to report that my feet did remain dry!

To distract myself from the appalling weather, i started listening to one of the audiobooks i had downloaded for this trip. After a moment's contemplatiom, I settled on Diana Athill's "Somewhere towards the End", a book that I had bought without reading (or listening) one line of it. It is an autobiography of sorts of this wonderfully witty and warm Englishwoman, but mostly it is about her experiences of getting old. You may find it strange that I would choose such a book as my travelling pastime, but then again, as some of you know, this is quite an easy topic compared to some of my bedside reading!;-)

The book turned out to be a very good choice,and I really enjoyed the first 3 chapters that I listened to before getting to Nyköping for a late lunch. There I had a capuccino in a bakery shop while trying to decide which of the several possible roads to take to my destination for tonight, Kolmården. In the end I missed the turn-off to the coastal road I wanted to take, and as a result spent the next hours edging up some mighty big hills inside a forest so much like Finland that I had to keep reminding myself I was not somewhere in Pohjois-Karjala. While cycling, it occurred to me that today is the day that according to an old proverb dictates whether one will have a sweet-heart during the following summer ("jos ei heili helluntaina, niin ei koko kesänä"). Hmm. As always (!) I am spending this day on my own. Does not look too promising then, but maybe the time limit can be extended to include the weeks before and after...?:-)

Got to Kolmården (the village of Krokek, NOT the zoo!) around 8pm and found this appallingly large and by no means cheap camsite by the sea. The fact that the showers and citchen are located no less than 400m from the area designated to people travelling with tents would be ridiculous if it wasn't so maddening, but fortunately the sauna was good (a Finnish heater, I checked:-)) and by the time I got out, my irritation had mellowed out. Am just about to make a hike to the loo, then it is high time I hit the sack.