Outdoor Discoveries

What originally was a news section for the rest of the website soon became a place for me to write about human-powered wanderings in the countryside. Photography inspires me to get out there, mostly on foot these days, though cycling got me started. Musings on the wider context of outdoor activity complete the picture, so I hope that there is something of interest in all that you find here. Thank you for coming!

Last hurrahs

29th August 2024

These days, this time of year makes me wistful at the passing of summer. However, it was not always so. This also is the season when academic years start, so there are beginnings as well as endings. Even then, the decline in hours of daylight and dropping temperatures brought any attempts to hang onto a sense of summer to an unyielding halt.

Towards the end of my secondary schooling, the purchase of a new bicycle meant cycling it home. That was not only a sixteen-kilometre distance but a frustrating struggle against autumnal winds. That which was plausible in the summer months had become less easy away from them. There were a few more years of summertime cycling, building up distance with the passage of time, that not only met shortening evenings but also the commencing of studies again. That was broken when I moved to Edinburgh, meaning that my time in Ireland was much more limited.

With the end of my university years, the association of autumn with beginnings was broken. It all ended with a job search that preceded by a tour of the Scottish highlands and islands with my brother before a quick trip to Ireland. In truth, the continuity of a research degree throughout the year had faded the sense of autumnal beginnings anyway.

My career saw me move to England, where I had much more time for exploring than I ever did. Without the ebb and flow of academic life, it was all too tempting to try overlooking the seasons, especially when moving south took up so much of spring and summer. August was when the hills of Cheshire and Derbyshire still any prospects of exploring hill country by bike. Walking became the way forward. As the month ended, I made my first trip to Wales in mixed weather that was hinting that overlooking seasons was not an option.

In ensuing years, the range of experiences broadened. A few saw me returning to Edinburgh in August to note how autumnal the place could feel at that time of year. Academic pressures and lack of experience meant that I had been overlooking this. That even included a week of conference attendance in Aberdeen during my research degree. The sense was there yet not prioritised.

Sometimes, autumn can make amends for a less satisfying summer. Being soaked around Lorn and Lochaber during a week at the end of July was enough to send me north again. Numerous visits to the Lake District in August had not healed wounds that only a weekend visit to Lochaber at the end of August could do. The year after was wet for much of the time, and I moved house too. Thus, a muddy November hike from the Cat and Fiddle Inn to Rushton Spencer marked something of a beginning.

September is a month with its illusions too. There can be a lot of sun, so it is easy to think of endless summer. That certainly fitted a sunny weekend around Moffat, crowned by a stunning walk along the Southern Upland Way. The changing colours and closure of businesses at the end of the busy tourist season countermand this. The latter hit me while on a September visit to Gougane Barra with my parents. Still, autumn can offer its chances for partial continuity with local hikes through October, November and into December. There have been a few years of that too.

Seasons are not the only transitions that we meet in life. A change of employer once became a major career event for me, Before the turmoil that led to this, there were contrasting trips to Yorkshire, one in September and another in October. The first was to a sunny Wharfedale, while an often grey Ingleton became my lot for the second. After the changeover, my energy for walking trips was curtailed, yet there was an October stroll along the High Peak Trail and a November excursion to Church Stretton. Though work pressures grew after that, the wandering was much needed and happened more often than not. When even that was halted, local cycles and walks often provided release.

Family ageing, infirmity and bereavement took hold of a few years after that. Grieving continued through spring, beyond summer and into autumn. Nothing could stop an October hike from the Cat and Fiddle inn to Whaley Bridge, such were my needs at the time. The real end of August feel pervaded a weekend divided between Durham and York. This may have been the Summer Bank Holiday one in England, but it often just feels too late for it. As it happens, the same complaint can be levelled at the timing of the British Spring Bank Holiday weekend.

Feelings eased by the next autumn, though a weekend spent in mixed weather around Oban reflected a sense of political tumult that only got more intense in ensuing years. Eventually, a sense of release emerged to allow a memorable September Swiss escapade. Bern and Kleine Scheidegg were grey under autumn clouds, yet Geneva, Zermatt and Grindelwald continued the sunny theme. Inheritance matters lay ahead, but not before a November interlude around Warwick, Stratford-upon-Avon and Bath.

International travel was getting going for me, and dotted the year for a few weeks. An end-of-August trip to sunny Oslo and rainy Bergen bookended the summer the year after the Swiss trip. Inheritance matters were coming to a head to show that office work need not note the passing of seasons, unlike outdoor activities. They were to cause exhaustion, so a later autumn would see decompression at the start of a much-needed career break. That year, there was continuity of a sort from a week in Sweden in August to October day hikes in the Peak District and South Pennines.

Before the pandemic years, my freelancing faced an autumnal challenge that got addressed before the onset of restrictions. In September, there were visits to Oxford and Bath following a summer in British Columbia. The autumnal atmosphere of those, even if people were dressed in period costume around Bath for an event, reflected my mood at the time, for more things were ending than starting in that year.

The pandemic did nothing to halt hiking and, in 2020, even caused a resurgence of cycling. Getting outdoors then was much needed, resulting in a surprisingly rich year of day trips. That more or less ended at the end of September on a day that turned from sunny to grey as I walked from Hayfield to Chapel en le Frith. In the subsequent twelve months, things became less restricted, perhaps too quickly for my sensibilities. That made the discovery of Combs Moss near Buxton an uncrowded godsend during August and September that year. More were to be found when a new variant brought more restrictions around the end of the year.

Since then, the last few years have been about changing what I own. Some is being sold, and I now have a base in Cork that I can use. Manageability is what I am trying to improve now. More time has been spent in the outdoors as well, especially in Ireland. When it comes to the ending of summer, that does not feature so much, though. In the year before last, August was ended with a sunny ascent of Helvellyn followed by less satisfying trips to the Ochil Hills and Trossachs, extending activities into September.

Last year, a longstanding personal matter got attention and progress has felt rather miraculous. That started in August of last year and was got helped by numerous hill walks in Wales in August and September, a trip to Guernsey at the end of August, and a satisfying October encounter with the Ochil Hills from Stirling. While there was a sense of curtailment as the year wore on and other matters intruded, it still is remarkable to note what was happening then in any case.

This year has seen numerous walking trips in various places. Wales, Scotland, France and Ireland all provide the locations. Irish responsibilities continue to be reduced alongside these, and I am looking to progress other work activities as well. Autumn this year is about looking forward more than looking back during a period of letting go of things.

Autumn can feel quiet, yet it is often busy. Places can feel less thronged, giving a sense of new beginning that gets thwarted by the increasing sense of approaching winter. Even so, the working lives of many become more busy, as do places of learning. The latter can be filled with hubris that then is vanquished by academic pressures. This is an odd time of year, looking forward with anticipation, but also looking back with poignancy. Maybe, that is what transition brings. Nevertheless, spring is more to my liking and likely will remain thus.

Logjam

3rd July 2019

One I feature a trip report for an overseas trip on here, chances are that urban strolling gets mixed in with rural hiking. Separating the two has a habit of feeling very wrong even when the the countryside explorations are subsets of what else occupied me. The comment applies as equally to Swedish explorations as much as they do to Aberdonian ones. It might be tempting to move the urban activities into my Travel Jottings and leave the shorter incursions into more more natural surroundings for here but it just feels like I am doing the whole task a disservice so they all end up here instead.

That has its consequences and the Swedish trip report was the cause of getting in the way of adding other content on here. After all, the trip was a six day affair and writing up each day would have proved challenging on its own but I left the whole lot go together. With overseas outings always likely to combine urban and rural, that conundrum is likely to remain but there may be chances for a split just as well. An Easter sojourn in Edinburgh could lend itself to such division and they are some ideas in my mind for purely urban explorations just as well. It all depends on how I feel about things at the time.

Another outcome of the uncomfortable juxtaposition of walking around built-up and wilder areas is that I decided on a name change to cover what is here that little bit better. After all, all my walking and cycling takes me out-of-doors so Outdoor Excursions is now the name you find at the top until I find something else or get in the mood for a change.

As it happens, there have been a few names for this place over the years and Collected Musings of a Hill Wanderer still feels the best even it now longer fits the style of the rest of the website. Maybe, it can return as a strapline even if I mix up the destinations for my wanderings these days. What will not alter is the intended focus on celebrating quality time in more natural surroundings while a better name might come to mind.

More extensive Swedish wanderings

20th June 2019

The summer of 2017 was packed with many things, and included among these were two Scandinavian excursions, bookending a period of emotional angst that preceded my undertaking a career break. It was the second of these that took me to Sweden, and it usefully covered up what was happening in my work life from those in whom I did not wish to confide any of the ongoing drama. The trip also offered as much to my inner explorer as it did to my emotional well-being, and there was much to occupy the former, both familiar and unfamiliar.

Arrival and Acclimatisation

My departure for Stockholm came near the end of the first week of my career break, and even that space allowed me to collect myself a little after a trying few months. What I was not to realise was just how much time away from working was needed, but that lay in the future. That the grey skies largely prevailed was of not concern to me, given my other needs.

In fact, my arrival in Sweden was accompanied by the same kind of weather, but it remained dry, which was more important than having sunshine. At the airport, I got a travel card and loaded it with enough credit to last a week, so I could travel on buses, trams and trains within Stockholm county without worrying about having change or buying tickets. It was a system that would come into its own for my explorations.

Its first use was in getting me to my hotel in Lidingö with a change in Stockholm’s central railway station, a place that I had last been just over seven years before then. My train journey came to an end at Ropsten, so I then continued on foot, though there was a tram service if I wanted it. Sometimes, finding one’s bearings takes precedence, even if I had luggage with me.

A busy road bridge loomed overhead as I made use of a lower counterpart for pedestrians and cyclists that lay beside that used by trams. My added burden ensured unhurried progress as I sampled the surroundings under grey skies before making landfall again and proceeding uphill to reach my destination near Millesgården.

That was sweaty work, but it was not the end of my strolling for the day. Before any such continuation, I needed to check in at my hotel and settle into my room. Apart from the need to find my bearings within the building, that happened without incident, and I was again out of doors. Being unladen this time around meant that I could walk a little quicker and try out other routes.

The major itinerary of the day took me from the hotel to the heart of the city and, having seen the length of the stroll, it convinced me of the sense of getting around by train and tram. Before that lesson was learned, I dropped down to the tram stop to find a cycle trail that would take me back to the heart of the city for some rambling not done since my first encounter in 2010. It processed around port installations before venturing inland to pass Stockholm stadium, the half point of my urban hike.

My goal was to reach Mäster Samuelsgatan, where Kartbutiken’s shop is to be found. However, it was closed by the time that I reached it, and a call into a branch of Akadamibokhandeln happened instead. While there was a section featuring books in English and walking maps were to be found, I delayed any purchases until the next day and continued exploring. In any event, most books on sale were published in Swedish, as might be expected.

Even though dull skies curtailed photographic designs, I still wanted to revisit sights not seen for more than seven years. That meant a visit to Stockholm’s City Hall, from which good views of Riddarholmen are to be enjoyed. The sun may have tried to break through the cloud cover, another day was needed to see Gamla Stan at its best, so I went back to my hotel by train and tram.

From a City Centre to a Royal Palace

The combination of unfinished business from the preceding evening and the promise of sunnier weather was enough to draw me back towards the city centre again, even if there was a cloudy start to the day, and it remained thus as I crossed the bridge to the train station. A short train ride took to me to either Karlaplan or Östermalmstorg (it could have been any one of these but faded recollections mean that I cannot tell which it was) from where I headed to Humlegården and passed the Kungliga Biblioteket before I left it to continue to Mäster Samuelsgatan to make a visit to Kartbutiken.

The sun may have been lighting my surroundings well by now, but I still spent time in that map and travel guide shop as planned. In fact, what I found came close to the spread of subjects that you would expect from a Stanfords store in England. Consequently, I lingered a while, and I seem to remember coming away with a map that was to come in very useful for the trip’s long hike along the Sörmlandsleden.

That was to be two days away, so I again made my way to the city hall to see how the Riddarholmen would appear in midday sunshine. The answer was that it was better lit than on the previous evening, but with more shadows. Evening lighting appeared to be the answer, and the time until then found good use for a short excursion through the local archipelago.

Drottningholm Palace, Stockholm, Sweden

Something that had been missed in 2010 was the presence of boat tours (it might have been that they had finished for the day by the time when I arrived from Södertälje or I just overlooked their presence), so I decided to explore what these offered. In a way, this reminded me of the short excursion around Oslofjord that I had sampled in June, and that may have made me more partial to the idea on that afternoon in Stockholm. What took my fancy was a return sailing to Drottningholm, where a royal palace is to be found. Along the way, I discovered that banknotes that I held over from my previous encounter were out of date and could not be used, but that was no dark spot on what otherwise was a blissful journey.

Since the characteristic shoreside view needs a morning approach to make the most of it for photographic capture, it just as well that Drottningholms Slott is situated in pleasing grounds. One quandary that I had was if I would have enough time to explore the place enough to do it justice before the last boat back to the city centre. In the event, there were no such problems and I had plenty of time to wander about to my heart’s content without needing to resort to alternative public transport options.

Riddarholmen, Gamla Stan, Stockholm, Sweden

There was an evening left for city centre wandering on my return from Drottningholm, and glorious sunshine lit the place fabulously. All I needed to do was set off strolling on foot and the city plan was engrained in my memory after being there in 2010, so I was not about to get lost. It was a matter of revisiting old sights and collecting new ones as I pottered around islands like Kungsholmen, Riddarholmen, Stadsholmen and Skeppsholmen. All of that sustained me until the light failed, and I then went back to the hotel for the night, having earned a good deal of satisfaction.

Strolling from Island to Island

Sunday morning began with some wandering about the island where my hotel was located. Handily, there was a nature reserve to be found only a short tram ride away, and the sunshine offered enough encouragement to get me exploring. In some ways, this included elements of aimless wandering, though that is not the whole story, even if weathered recollections make it appear thus.

Kottlasjön, Lidingon, Stockholm, Sweden

Others had much the same inclination, but there was ample space for all of us, with solitude on offer during most of my ambling. A forest trail took me towards the shore of Kottlasjön, a pretty lake I was to shadow until I turned north on the way towards Ekholmsnässjön. Much of this was along part of the Lindingöloppet, a 30 km looped walking trail, but there was not so much to see of the lake itself and the sky was filling with clouds. That eventually limited photography, but I still continued towards Gåshaga, though road walking was my lot thereafter. Still, there were brighter interludes and I got to see some passing shipping like the departing ferry from Gåshaga Brygga before returning to my hotel by tram.

Junibacken & Nordiska Museet, Stockholm, Sweden

All that building cloud brought rain, and there was a midday shower that convinced to get a raincoat that became less useful than I had feared, for that was the only wetting of the day. Sunny skies full of broken cloud cover was what I mainly enjoyed for the rest of the day. That applied as I crossed Ladugårdsgärdet to reach the bridge linking it with Djurgården. It may be an island with a ferry service, but I entered and left it using handy bridges while enjoying the greenery in between these. After leaving, there were plenty of sightings of the place on offer as I continued towards the city centre.

After more city centre explorations, I moved onto Södermalm with a view to reaching Björkhagen since it is the northern end of the Sörmlandsleden, a trail that I was to follow north from Tyresta National Park the following day, and the green space that surrounded it. In the event, I never did get that far, and it might have avoided a later quandary had I done so, but that is history now. The declining light showed me it was time to return to me hotel for the night after a day that became laden with rambling.

A Day of Lakeland Hiking along the Sörmlandsleden

My overseas trips always feature at least one hike, and my time in Stockholm was no different. Complementing all the city strolling was a day spent along the section of the Sörmlandsleden between Tyresta National Park and the outskirts of Stockholm. Getting to the national park involved rail and bus travel, with the latter being a one-way trip that added a sense of commitment to my endeavour.

While the transport changeover at Hansen had been made more pleasant by the proximity of lakes like Övre Rudasjön, the surroundings easily felt more rural in the national park itself. In fact, there was a hint of the agrarian about the starting point for my walk, with hens pottering about freely near what looked like a farmstead.

These surroundings were left after me to enter woodland that brought a certain sense of forest bathing to my day. Signs declared that any fallen trees were left where they fell for the benefit of nature, though I was to find that pathways were excluded from this practice, so there was to be no added element of bushwhacking or any sense of negotiating an obstacle course. All in all, this was to be a gentler if lengthy stroll.

Årsjötjärnen, Tyresta National Park, Sodermanland, Sweden

Årsjön, Tyresta National Park, Sodermanland, Sweden

Tyresö-Flaten, Krusboda, Sodermanland, Sweden

Forest bathing already got a mention, but there was another wetter form available if anyone was so inclined. This was because I was wandering through a lake-studded landscape and the length of my endeavour ensured a similarly long list of lakes that included Bylsjön, Årsjötjärnen, Årsjön, Tyresö-Flaten, Albysjön, Alkärret, Kolardammarna, Öringesjön, Strålsjön, Sandasjön, Ulvsjön, Söderbysjön and Dammtorpssjön. Looking at the names now makes me wonder if I had passed so many lakes on foot during a single day, and that may have been the case.

As I passed from lake to lake, the peace and quiet was striking. After all, it was a Monday, so the weekend had passed, and it was coming towards the end of summer. Having wandered around a city over the weekend, country walking was going to be quieter but, away from lakes, camping grounds and conurbations like Nyfors and Öringe, I was to have more than enough time and space for myself. There even were wilder interludes like the sudden appearance of a snake scurrying across a path at close quarters that awoke me from my reverie.

Even with those extra folk out and about in the evening, their presence hardly made an imprint on the ambience. The same applied to my reaction when my GPS receiver started to act strangely. It felt as if it was trying to tell me that I was walking too far, but that was not how I was feeling at the time. Fatefully, I decided to switch off the device and resolve to depend on a paper map and any waymarks for as long as was needed.

As the evening wore on, thoughts of leaving the trail early were entertained before being rejected. After Öringe, my surroundings regained a wilder feel, and that is how it remained as the time to sunset ever reduced. Human encounters were occasional and hardly intrusive. Conurbations were near yet felt so far away.

Eventually, dusk came upon me and I needed my head torch, though picking out flashes of red paint on tree bark in the gloaming became an ever more challenging pursuit. My GPS receiver was missed, but I still got to the golf course near Dammtorpssjön without too much difficulty. It was on the way from there until the end of the walk that fatigue and scepticism finally caught up with me.

The result was the descent of a sense of uncertainty despite the present of street lights; they looked so out of place that their presence threw me a bit. Even so, I remained largely on track until one final junction, where a well-lit sign with an actual map was overlooked in favour of a signpost that sent me along a track to a dark roadside near another outdoors centre. After a little exploration, I started on my way back to the hotel by bus before continuing the rest of the way by rail.

A Fleeting Encounter with Gothenburg

The preceding night’s wrong turn must have weighed on my mind, for I returned to the scene the next morning. A daytime visit set this to rights, even if time did not allow for more complete closure of whatever was rumbling in my mind. That had to be left behind me.

The reason for the aforementioned time limitation was my wanting to visit Gothenburg on a day trip from Stockholm. High-speed train travel made short work of the crossing, even if the later departure time reduced my time in Sweden’s second most populous city to less than two hours. On the way, there was much window gazing and the quiet ambience allowed for some reading too.

Vallgraven, Gothenburg, Sweden

Palmhuset, Trädgårdsföreningen, Gothenburg, Sweden

Even so, there was enough time for me to get my bearings and find some nearby leafier parts. These may not be as accessible as Stockholm, but I have spied some tempting green spaces on maps since then, and there is an offshore archipelago. Making use of such possibilities will need a return visit given the time that I allowed myself. In any case, the added warm sunshine left me with some pleasing photos, so they will suffice until then.

Continuing a Career Break

My time in Sweden was coming to a close, so I went back to Stockholm for one more night. The return train journey was just as peaceful as its outbound counterpart, and there was no need to rush the next morning because of the timing of my flight back to Manchester. It helped that there were luggage lockers at the central train station, and I popped out for one last visit to the city hall before making for the airport by train. It was time to leave Sweden for the rest of my career break, a longer journey specked with more outdoor wanderings that have yet to be related on here.

Travel Arrangements

There was so much shuttling around Sweden’s capital by bus, train and tram that the individual journeys get too long to list. Instead, they appear in the main body of the narrative, and it is the return boat trip between Stockholm that gets a special mention. That needed the payment of a special fare while the city’s Access card was charged for seven days to pay for my land travel needs (they can be purchased at the airport).

The longer journeys are easier to list, and the return flight between Manchester and Stockholm was the longest of these. Travel to and from airports was by train, and the Arlanda Express did what I needed in Sweden. The services of SJ were used for the return train journey between Stockholm and Gothenburg, though MTR Express also operates the same route, albeit with different stops.

Echoes of repetition

1st March 2019

There are times when trip ideas get re-used. The unseasonal sunny weather that dominated the second week of February became a backdrop to some of this. Firstly, it lured me up to Great Ayton for a day spent around Roseberry Topping, Highcliffe Nab and Easby Moor. This was a variation of a route enjoyed more than a year earlier when snow and ice were dominant. Then, the ground conditions added a need for extra care that probably should have precluded an ascent of Roseberry Topping that was facilitated far better in conditions more typical of late spring or early summer.

A few days later, I was drawn to Earl Sterndale for a walk that took in the tops of both Parkhouse Hill and Chrome Hill. The latter was more friendly to those whose tolerance of exposure is more limited. Some might go up and over the former but I did an out and back trip to its summit before kinder gradients were descended in a northward direction. In the autumn of 2017, I had passed both on the way from Sterndale Moor to Buxton but avoided their summits on that equally pleasant sunny day.

Sometimes, there are stronger patterns of repetition there is one shared between 2010 and 2017. Both featured trips to Sweden and Aberdeenshire as well as marking the start and end of my time with a single employer. Because of the changeover in employment arrangements, the destination pairing has a certain eerie resonance for me.

Neither the Swedish or Aberdeen trips were my first to either place but it took a third visit to the former for more of a leisure focus to show itself. September 1997 saw my first visit to Aberdeen and that was for a scientific congress while business was the main motivation for those first two trips to Sweden. Even so, there opportunities for personal exploration offer themselves too because conferences cannot occupy you for all their duration and long sunny Swedish summer evenings made for pleasant strolling around both Södertälje and Stockholm.

The 2010 sojourn in Aberdeen allowed for more city strolling and a visit to Braemar only months after starting a new job. There was no mountain walking in 2017 but Stonehaven, Dunnottar Castle, Banchory, Crathes Castle and the Deeside Way more than occupied the time not spent on city wanderings. In fact, the idea of doing some castle visiting was a seed sown during the previous trip. That it preceded my leaving the company that I joined in 2017 by a matter of months made it a kind of a bookend to my time there.

One of the motivations for heading to Aberdeen for the 2017 Spring Bank Holiday weekend was as a means of dealing with the fact that I no longer enjoyed working where I was. Together with a second trip to Norway, it was intended to salve the lack of enthusiasm that I had for what I was doing but it was not to be a long term strategy so I made the difficult decision to leave my then employer and take a career break while I worked through the aftermath of a number of life events as well as working out what my future career direction might be.

It was after starting the career break, that I then headed to Stockholm for an extended weekend stay. My previous time in Sweden preceded a departure from a then current employer and information transfer was its purpose. Only weeks later, I was going to start with the employer that I left in 2017 so there was a curious symmetry about my actions. Naturally, city explorations were to follow with even Gothenburg receiving a fleeting visit. Tyresta National Park became the starting point for the longest hike that I enjoyed while in the country. The whole experience was vastly more restive than the preceding months and it would take more than a year before I started to explore places beyond British and Irish shores.

If I have my way, such juxtapositions as pairings of trip destinations and career changes may not be repeated in the future. Though there are other places to see and experience, I also hope to continue my Scottish and Scandinavian encounters. My choice would be that they do not need career upheavals to make them happen because we need to keep making more happy memories to get us through times that are more testing.

A Scandinavian project in the making

20th September 2017

Over the past few years, I have fitted in visits to Iceland, Norway and Sweden. The one to Iceland concentrated on the south-east of the country and I now wonder what could draw me back again. With Norway, there is no such quandary after two visits that took in Oslo, Stavanger and Bergen. In the case of Sweden, last month saw me embark on my third visit there and it was my first leisure trip after two business ones too.

Vondugiljaaurar, Landmannalaugar, Fjallabak, Iceland

Iceland is something of a fashionable destination now and I took in Reykjavík, Þingvellir, Haukadalur, Gullfoss and Landmannalaugar on my first trip there. They were easy pickings in a sense, so next steps would take more effort. Þórsmörk is one spot that I did not get to see on that summer 2015 encounter and there is the Laugavegur if I really get adventurous enough to go for a multi-day trek; in any event, there is unfinished business around Landmannalaugar because there is more to see around there and sunshine was scarce on the day that I visited. Continuing along the south coast would bring me to sights like Jökulsárlón and Sellalandsfoss while there are mountains near Reykjavík itself that would reward exploration. A northern excursion to Akureyri would be rewarded by its nearby mountains while the celebrated Mývatn and Dettifoss are within reach of Iceland’s second city too. The whole collection should give me enough options to build up motivation for a return sometime and there also are those things that you only uncover by actually being somewhere that you have not been before.

Revsvatnet, Vatne, Rogaland, Norway

In many ways, Norway is laden with excuses for return visits to follow the pair that I already enjoyed. For instance, there are hiking options to the north of Oslo that deserve a share of my time. Bergen only saw me for a few days and there are possibilities that I had to exclude because of this. The chance of a fjord cruise was one exclusion that I had to make and I would like to know that part of Norway a bit more, much like what I did around Stavanger when I took in Lysefjorden, a few of the city’s lakes, Preikestolen and Revsvatnet. Of course, Norway’s long mountainous profile allows for other places to visit and that includes going north of the Arctic Circle to places like Tromsø and Lofoten as well as Trondheim and Jotunheimen National Park. It could be that a list like that could keep me going to Norway and I certainly feel as if I have made a foothold in the country already.

Årsjötjärnen, Tyresta National Park, Södermanland, Sweden

My recent Swedish excursion was long overdue and basing myself in Stockholm meant that I spent much of my time pottering about its varied quarters. The city centre was known to me from a business trip in 2010 but I also got to explore a few of the many parks, like Djugárden and the nature reserve on Lindingö together with Drottningholm Palace and Tyresö National Park. There was a lengthy walk along the Sörmlandsleden from the latter that brought me to the outskirts of Stockholm. That first taste of Swedish hiking needed an easier day afterwards, so a short sortie to Gothenburg was the result so I got to see even more of the Swedish countryside through the window of a high-speed train.

Though Finland and Denmark have been omitted so far and there remains the possibility of a visit to the Faroe Islands, I am more inclined to pursue further explorations of Norway and Sweden. For me, the prospect of cooler Scandinavian summers is a bonus since I see temperatures near the Alps can reach 30º C or above and that cooler high places can be plagued by thunderstorms. What I have been doing already is finding my feet in a manner similar to my explorations of Scotland’s wilder corners. From those beginnings, further incursions are possible and it feels that I might be on the point of doing just that.

There also are added rewards from all of this and that, ironically, is because of a lack of hiking guides in English. That hits home when you see a series of eye-pleasing walking guides in Swedish and most of them available only in the language of the country that they cover. German speakers do well too with Rother offering good coverage of both Norway and Sweden with some English translations available too. Cicerone offers good coverage for Iceland, but their guide to Norway appears preoccupied with multi-day treks rather than routes for day walkers; it could do with the mix of day walks and treks included in its Icelandic stable-mate. Independent publishing also abounds with coverage of Noway’s Stavanger region and Sweden’s Kungsleden.

Maps are another matter and that trip to Iceland uncovered the deficiencies of a 1:100000 scale around Landmannalaugar and that is why a GPS found its way into my possession within months of the experience. Thankfully, Norway and Sweden are better served. In the case of the former, 1:50000 is the dominant scale with 1:25000 used for popular areas; the Oslo branch of Tanum has a comprehensive selection. Mountain areas of Sweden can be covered using 1:100000 while 1:50000 pervades elsewhere and the Kartbutiken shop in Stockholm is well worth a call.

For much of the first ten years of the century, I had a Scotland project on the go and, though there is more to see in that part of the world, a Scandinavian project has got going. Various trips are allowing me to find my feet there and they really are a break from my everyday world too. There also is much more to see and savour that is all very new to me. Quite how things go from here is anyone’s guess. They may send this blog down an intriguing course followed by no one else and that cannot be a bad thing.