DryStoneGarden

Another lovely Swedish trail is the Marstrand Trail. Marstrand is like Dyron, another island in the archipelago northwest of Gothenburg. And, like Dyron, it’s a charmer.

The trail quickly leaves town and goes through a narrow slot similar to the gullies on Dyron.

Then there is some coastal scenery and airy woodland.

But the best section of trail is out on the stormswept rockiness on the west side of the island, a string of little bridges weaving through the slickrock.

Very cool, very Swedish.

Another lovely Swedish hiking trail is on Dyron in the archipelago a little north of Gothenburg. Dyron’s a lovely island and the trail is laid out with a lot of style. Steps and boardwalks and handrails, beautiful views of the water. Rocky crags, ferns, and heather. It’s about 5 km to circumnavigate the entire little island.

This section of boardwalk leads to the waterside sauna, considered one of Sweden’s best and definitely one of the best I’ve ever used. Oddly, the island also has a small herd of introduced Mouflon Sheep living wild on the tiny island. The sauna I expected, the sheep I did not.

And the boardwalks are more extensive than I expected, built and maintained by volunteer retirees who call themself the Blue Men, though, regrettably, they do not dress like the Vegas lounge act. Boardwalks are a resource and labor intensive type of trail — 50 tons of wood provided by the European Union, countless hours of labor by the blue men — and I really appreciate the effort.

A wonderful little island and trail.

I am a total sucker for a boardwalk trail through a bog expanse, so I routed my Sweden trip to pass through the Great Bog National Park. I felt a little self-conscious on my way there, like I should head to Norway’s fjordlands instead of a bog, but I had no regrets once I got there. It’s great, a pocket of laplands in southern Sweden, a wide chartreuse plain beneath a beautiful sky, and I particularly loved the boardwalk trail. Loved it so much I hiked it twice.

There are straight lines in the section of bog near the train tracks, scars from peat mining in the past. Pink Heather grows on the raised seams between the plots where peat was harvested. There’s a long-term restoration project to heal the scars, but long-term is an understatement when you’re talking about peat which regrows at an average rate of 1 mm per year.

Some scraggly pines make it into the area that was heavily harvested.

But the true bog is almost treeless.

The bog has long skinny ridges like sand dunes, with pine and heath growing on them. Science isn’t sure how they formed.

The park has a lake and what feels like more of a wetlands than a bog, and the boardwalk is a luxurious three boards wide. It’s awkward but possible to let people pass.

A lot of Bilberries in the park.

A couple sections of corduroy but the park has lots and lots of boardwalk.

Beautiful boardwalk.

These are my photos of the Cap Ferrat trail. It’s quite similar to the Cap d’Antibes trail, so it’s maybe not strictly necessary to hike them both, but I’m so glad I did. They’re both fantastic.

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Last year I posted about the Ruta de Cares in Asturias and it reminded me how much I love trails as a thing in and of themselves, separate from the landscapes and scenery viewed from them. Trails are awesome, and their simplicity — a walking surface, usually made from the land and materials found right there trailside — leads to a surprising variety.
In France this summer I hiked another exceptional pair of trails, the coastal walks at Cap Antibes and Cap Ferrat. Great scenery, great hiking experience — walking along the water and swimming in the coves — but beyond that they seem distinctively ‘of their place’ and it’s hard to imagine them anywhere other than the south of France.

I’ll post Cap Ferrat separately. Cap Antibes was my favorite of the two, but they’re both exceptional. Both trails are mortared with trailside stone like front-country hardscaping. They front posh resort properties and there’s almost always a yacht somewhere in view, but the landscape feels a bit austere and savage.

On the inland side, the trail is lined by the garden walls and fences of plutocrat vacation properties, a weird aspect of the trail. I’m not sure if it made me feel mildly unwelcome or if it made me feel satisfied that I was getting a millionaire experience for free. Probably a bit of both. It’s also a feature of the trail that there’s always a yacht visible somewhere out on the water. (more…)

This one isn’t sculpture or land art, but it has some of the same effects. It’s the Ruta de Cares in Picos de Europa National Park, a fantastic trail in the mountains just a little inland from the north coast of Spain. It’s an exceptionally flat trail through an exceptionally un-flat landscape, which might not sound amazing but just look at the photos and imagine yourself there. It’s spectacular.

I was a little slow to figure it out while I was hiking, but the trail was built to serve as the access trail for maintaining an aqueduct. It follows along beside the aqueduct, and because the aqueduct is at such a shallow grade, the trail is also flat, like a desert trail except it runs through a limestone gorge. And then, because it goes through the mountains (sometimes literally), a ton of effort went into making it flat, into matching the shallow grade of the aqueduct, much more work than anyone would ever use on a recreation trail. It has tunnels blasted through the rock, bridges, rock walls, arches, I’ve never seen so much effort put into a trail.

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