Leaving Leafy Sweden
And so we come to the end of the fields, forests, fells, fjords and farmhouses of our Swedish journey.
We’re now on a ferry between Stockholm and Turku in Finland, having spent the last 16 days wending our way slowly around from Malmo to the southern coast and then up the eastern coast to Stockholm, arriving today. I’ve just totalled up and see we’ve covered a total of 996km (we’ll use Swedish rounding to say it’s 1,000km, OK?) and have seen a lot of scenery. It’s been a journey through rural landscapes, with some coasts and lakes thrown in. And hills. We came here expecting fairly flat landscapes, but it’s turned out to be surprisingly hilly. Not big hills, but lots of little ones, which rather spoils the two main benefits of climbing hills: panoramic views and long, fast descents down the other side.
Our route had provided us with a lot of greenery in the form of fields (especially wheat) and forests - both coniferous and broadleaf. And lots of characteristic red farmhouses and outbuildings.
The route itself has been a real mixed bag - we’ve had some great days of cycle paths or tiny (yet sealed) rural roads, but one particular day was a real struggle. We’d already been directed onto the main E22 trunk road for a few sections the previous day, which wasn’t much fun. But this one came when it was in dual carriageway form, in rain, and with no verge, so we were cycling in the main carriageway with cars and large trucks + trailers roaring past - scary and not an experience we wanted to repeat. The day had already had a hard start, when we were cycling at the other extreme - along a long section of track through forest, with an awful surface of loose granite rock chips, making for difficult traction.
It even included having to lift our bikes over two separate fallen trees. Topping the day off were the hills - we were constantly climbing and descending. Although nominally at sea level all day, my cycle computer’s altimeter recorded a total ascent of 686m. We were both very glad to finally arrive at our campsite for the night, even if the check-in process was particularly painful - lots of pointless details required, before being directed to a powered site, despite requesting a non-powered site. At least we had had one fun highlight for the day - our lunch stop coincided with some rain, so we ended up eating in a bus shelter on a roadside between two sets of speed bumps. With passing cars required to slow over the bumps, we got a lot of quizzical looks as drivers saw two slightly bedraggled cyclists with lunch and various other belongings strewn around the shelter.
That evening, we checked the route for the following day and saw more sections of E22 cycling pending, without seeing viable alternatives. On that basis, we decided to arrange to take a train or bus to the next large city, Norrkoping, about 100km north. We had a leisurely start to the day, with the prospect of being in a city within a few hours. Things proved a little more challenging. On getting to the town’s train station, we discovered nothing more than a platform and a sign, along with a timetable. The tracks had a well established crop of weeds and we couldn’t work out if there really was a train service still operating. We went to a local cafe for coffee and pastry (always a good option, when in doubt). There, a young waitress indicated a better option would be to get a bus to Norrkoping; she helped us fill in the on-line booking form, inclusive of ‘special baggage’ for the bikes. We duly biked to the bus stop, where we took all our bags off the bikes and I removed pedals and turned the handlebars around to make them more manageable. When the bus arrived, the driver took one look at the bikes and refused to let us board; despite protestations (and even some help from a lovely local pleading our case), he was adamant. We then cycled back into town and had lunch in a park to re-think options. We ended up going back to the train ‘station’ where we spoke to a young woman who assured us, despite the apparent evidence of it being an ex-service, she was waiting for a train going in the other direction and that there was indeed a train to Norrkoping soon after.
As it turned out, Julie asked the conductor of the young woman’s train about carriage of bikes on trains - even from a distance, I could tell by the vigorous chopping motions being made by the conductor that bikes could not be taken on the train. So we’d spent the day in vain. Seemingly, despite Sweden’s encouragement of cycling, it almost actively discourages taking bikes on public transport (although I understand this will change in 2026, when it will fall into line with EU regulations). Making the most of it, we decided to treat it as a rest day (and clothes washing day). We headed back to the campsite, where we got asked the same questions by the same girl who checked us in the previous day - she even asked me to fill in my address and date of birth on the same page of the notebook she’d asked me it do it previously (seemingly, I’m instantly forgettable as a Kiwi cycling in Sweden…).
The experience made me re-assess our route planning. Previously, I’d just got the Komoot app to generate the entire route between Malmo and Stockholm, with no regard to daily intervals. That evening, I spent some time breaking down the remainder of our trip into manageable daily bite-sized chunks, from one campsite to the next, all specifically tweaked where Komoot routed us onto our nemesis, the E22. It generated five days of rides of between 50 - 80km to get us into central Stockholm. We’re also now re-considering options once we get to Helsinki in Finland. We’d planned to take a ferry across to Tallinn in Estonia and cycle southwards through the Baltic States into Poland. Now, based on what we’ve recently heard of limited infrastructure for cycle camping in the Baltic States, along with our need to be back in the UK for late August, we’re thinking of trying to minimise hassle to taking trains (with bikes…) across large swathes of eastern and Central Europe to get back to a ferry port to the UK. Current thinking is taking a ferry from Helsinki to Travemunde in Germany (near Lubeck) and then trains to Switzerland so that we can cycle down the Rhine all the way to Rotterdam. Watch this space for further developments…
Those last five days of cycling were probably the best of all. The routes worked well and, apart from one section of c. 1km of E22 that we ended up having to take (the alternative was directing us down an overgrown grassed path behind a barrier), they were largely on cycle paths or quiet rural roads with little vehicle traffic.
Being honest, we’ve been a bit underwhelmed by a lot of what we’ve seen of Sweden. While the scenery has been lovely, it started to get a bit samey - one pine forest doesn’t look much different from another - we expected more of the famed Swedish cultural heritage. Worst of all, many of the small villages we’ve passed through have not provided us with the coffee and pastries that we’d sought. There have been exceptions, of course. At Kalmar, we enjoyed wandering around what is reputed to be the finest Renaissance castle in the Nordic countries - complete with moat and drawbridge.
The day before our hard day of gravel tracks and dual carriageways, the highlight was a sauna at the campsite at Blankaholm. Run by Stefan from Germany, it was a low key site, by a sea inlet. He didn’t need to ask twice when suggesting a sauna after a day of cycling. Once he’d fired it up, it still wasn’t up to full heat when we entered, so we ended up spending almost two hours lounging and dozing inside as it got hotter. Julie went for a dip in the sea part-way through, but only got as far as her waist before retreating - the sea temperature was only something like 15 degrees.
That evening we treated ourselves to a meal and drinks at a local restaurant. After ordering what the waitress said was her favourite meal from the menu, the food duly arrived about five minutes later: baked salmon, boiled potatoes, salad and a sauce dressing. Let’s just say you don’t come to Sweden for the cuisine - but it certainly went down well after a day in the saddle.
The last few days provided us with more of what we’d been expecting. Valdermarsvik was a lovely little town based around a port/marina, with a sense of vibrancy that we hadn’t previously experienced.
There, Julie was almost beside herself with excitement when she found a stack of vintage linen tea towels in the local Red Cross charity shop. They’d clearly been put in a drawer decades ago - presumably as a wedding present - and hadn’t seen the light of day since. Two were bought. It was apparent that Swedish death cleaning is a real thing - the quality of stuff for sale was typically much higher than you’d see in NZ or the UK.
The next day at Soderkoping was lovely - friendly campsite owner, charming old town, next to the cross-country Gota Canal. The canal-side pub with on-site brewery may have featured, too. And the buffet breakfast at the campsite’s café next morning certainly set us up for the day.
We had our first ferry crossing that day - only around 500m, but part of the road network, so free of charge.
Our penultimate day started well, with an old boy on his morning constitutional walk with cross-country ski poles, who gave us a big smile and a “hej hej” (the happy form of “hello”). It’s a reminder of how unusual that sort of interaction has been with the locals in Sweden. Our destination that day, Trosa, was lovely - an old town, now thronging with tourists from nearby Stockholm.
Our final night of camping there was on an island and was probably the best campsite of all. Our tent site overlooked the sea and we celebrated the last tent night in Sweden with post-cycling drinkies and an excellent (non-Swedish) meal at the campsite’s cafe.
Once at the dock, we joined the queue of cars to get onto the Viking Glory to take us to Turku. Once we’d secured our bikes, we discovered that I had seemingly inadvertently upgraded our cabin booking to one with a double bed and a complimentary bottle of sparkling wine to celebrate leaving Sweden. While the ship itself was a bit too cruise-like for my taste (live music, games rooms, multiple bars/restaurants, duty-free shop over-run with people purchasing alcohol), the view from the stern of the ship, looking back at Stockholm and its archipelago of islands and skerries as we sailed through in the warm setting sun was a magical way to finish our time in Sweden.
A few observations to finish:
We’ve camped every night since setting off from Malmo and can confirm that the campsites have almost all be exemplary. The facilities have been amazing, with great kitchens (even if fridges didn’t feature at most sites over the latter 10 days, for some reason). Toilets and showers have been excellent - spotlessly clean and mostly with lots of space to hang clothes, towels, toiletries while showering - always key considerations at campsites. One even had a requirement that you took your shoes off at the door, replacing them from a stack of indoor-only Crocs.
We’ve met a small number of cycle tourists along the way: a middle-aged Dutch couple (carrying a similar amount of gear as us, including a collapsible electrical kettle), a young German guy who was about to cut his trip short and try to get a train to Malmo, a young Finnish guy finishing off a big loop around the Baltic, a couple of middle-aged German blokes who were old friends from university days on a semi-annual bike trip together, and a couple of young German lads nearing the end of a mission from central Germany. Notably, Swedes were absent. Something we did see a lot of was bikes on the back of camper vans or caravans - we rarely saw any sign of their use, though.
The restrictions on alcohol sales in Sweden is quite intriguing. At supermarkets and small stores, you can only buy alcohol-free or low-strength beers (3.5% maximum, I think). Often these beers are in open shelves, so not chilled, presumably all to discourage binge drinking. Anything stronger can only be bought at bars, restaurants or state-run alcohol stores. While I didn’t go out of my way to look for these stores, I only noticed one on our entire two and a half weeks in Sweden.
Mini-golf is a hugely popular pastime at campsites. The courses seem to be obligatory features of all Swedish campsites (and many towns, too) and get well used. Don’t get it myself, but then I’m sure most campers don’t understand the attraction of cycle touring either.
One thing we never got to grips with in Sweden has been the pedestrian/cycle crossings, of which there are many in Sweden. They still fill me with trepidation. Arriving at a marked crossing, we’ve experienced times when drivers have stopped to allow us to cross, as we’d expect in NZ or here UK. On multiple occasions, though, two drivers have gone straight through, before a third allows us to cross. We’ve taken to making very sure that drivers have seen us and come to a halt before we venture out. It appears that stopping for pedestrians and cyclists is entirely discretionary.
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