As mentioned in our previous post, we were in need of a longer break after our “race” to Lake Vänern, but maybe also after six weeks of bikepacking.
The tiredness might be more than just physical. All the daily planning, finding places to sleep, making sure we have enough food, dealing with road issues or wrong turns, and all the big and small decisions we have to make every day. Plus, the rules for making those decisions keep changing: every country, sometimes even every region, does things differently.
And what starts as fun (vacation!) is apparently slowly becoming a burden.
Okay, it’s a luxury problem, I hear you think. I know, and it’s true.
We rested a lot these four days, but also did a lot of thinking and talking about how to overcome this burden.
On the final day of our recuperation period, we observed a glimmer of progress in our struggle to find a solution. A significant aspect that evaded us for much of the journey was the time to truly appreciate the experience. The balance between effort and true relaxation had become skewed.
So the last day we took a little bike ride around the nearby lakes. We even had a stop at a lovely cafe that served some classic Swedish waffles for fika. We walked through the associated museum there and just soaked in the beautiful scenery of the lakes.
We went further and biked through a place called Håverud, which we visited with Kaat in July 2017.
It’s a special place with 3 bridges: one for boats, one for trains, and one for cars. Plus, it has lots of locks to get boats to the right level of the landscape.
We kept going around the lake and saw lots of pretty stuff. We also had some serious chats about how to keep our trip going. And yeah, we’re still on, but we’re gonna try to cap our daily kilometers (no more than 60, ideally 50 if there’s a lot of uphill) so we still have time to relax.
Our intention is to proceed anyhow to Mora, at which point we will see whether to continue northward or commence our journey towards the south. Mainly the wild camping proves to be a challenge for us and mainly all the uncertaintiesit brings. We took a membership to Warm Showers, an organisation similar to Welcome to My Garden, to have more options to choose from. We will not exclude the wild camping, and will certainly give it another try.
Tomorrow we bike to a place near Tresticklan’s National Park and near Norway. The first step in the direction of Molkom and Mora.
To be continued…
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