In January, my sister and her friends were visiting me at that time, and they had asked specifically for a day in nature. I shared the whole adventure through Instagram stories but as many have asked, I will tell you more about it…
The plan
This master plan started in October when I met a friend for a fika. She had just finished her master and was flying out of the country. I, on the other hand, was just arriving and discovering Sweden. Among other subjects, we talked about hikes she would recommend. She told me about a sauna in a nature reserve that you could book and hike up to.
I checked it up on Naturkartan (an online guide for exploring nature in Sweden), as well as how to get there. However, I faced a few obstacles: all reasonable times were already booked until December and I didn’t have a personnummer.
When my sister told me she would come to Linköping, I jumped on the website to see if they had any availabilities. I found a slot on a Thursday from 12.00 to 15.00!
The plan was to get there, have a barbeque, get warm in the sauna, (take a dip in the frozen lake), and come back under the stars.
As you might know, in January, the sun is still setting quite early, so I told them to bring their swimsuits as well as their headlamps (strange combo!).
I went again a few weeks later with a friend from Norrköping, but at a later time so we had to walk back the full way back on a pitch-black night.
Getting to the forest
The sauna is in the region, but not so close to Linköping. From my house, I had to take a bus, a train and another bus. I used a ‘Region ticket’ valid for 24h that works both on busses and trains (check on the Östgötatrafiken app).
1. Bus -> Linköping Resecentrum (train station)
2. Regional train -> Norrköping Resecentrum
3. Bus 12 -> Torshag (last stop)
The hike
The hike starts a bit further down the road (indicated ‘Glöttern’ — the name of the forest), behind a building.
In the beginning, we followed along the lake, but we saw some people ice-skating so we decided to try walking on it for a while. An enlightening experience!
We then followed the path (with orange markings most of the time) through a beautiful forest, in between lakes and all the way to the sauna.
We had a bit of trouble starting the barbeque fire because it was super windy, but we managed to get our vegan sausages grilled!
After the sauna, we decided to not go home by the same route, but to cross the (frozen) lake, and get back on a trail I had previously explored.
The wind was strong and the ice was slippery so we struggled across the lake: stopping meant moving to the side. We climbed onto an island and rejoined our path.
The sunset was illuminating the sky with a magnificent pink-ish red light.
The other time, it started in a fairly similar way until our GPS decided to indicate the wrong position and we got lost. We finally found back our path and hiked to the sauna. However, the very super duper strong wind the night before was still howling at us. Some freshly broken trees were impeding our path; others were creaking and menacing to fall on us. We decided to play it safe and follow the road on the way back. We didn’t know that we would stumble on a high-speed road. We walked along the railing until an opportunity to cross appeared and we could reach a small road.
Unless you are experienced in climbing, adventuring, swimming in frozen waters, outrunning cars
or roaming in unsteady areas, I would advise following the previously linked path.
And you, what are the craziest hikes you’ve done?
/Agathe
