Summer in deep south Sweden, four days of cycling gravel tracks, narrow lanes, wild camping

So I'm in Sweden. This is Malmö and I'm setting off on a four-day ride. I think it'll be four days. I was in Sweden because my husband is Swedish. He was working here in Malmö for four days and then we were going to go to the cottage that we've got in the countryside. So I thought why don't I cycle there? I should get there at about the same time as he would. I hadn't done the journey by bike before so I thought it would be interesting just to do a straight line and see what I found. It would be a mix of gravel tracks and small lanes, wild camping all the way, about 280 kilometres in total through two big and really different regions, Skåne and Småland. So I took my bike and tent and stove and I set off from the centre of Malmö. After a few kilometres of city streets and edge of town industrial estates, I emerged into the Skåne countryside. Oh god, it's always a bit of a thing getting out of town isn't it? But I'm out now and it's just beautiful. Skåne is famous for big farmhouses, big fields and for being flat but it isn't all flat. It's not a big climb but this is a climb. Parts of Skåne are pan-flat but parts of it, this bit for example, aren't. I was climbing over the end of the Rommelursen ridge. So here is my plan route actually. So the cottage is here and I'm going to ride through Skåne and into Småland. And the thing is this whole area, Skåne and the neighbouring provinces actually used to be Danish until really quite recently like the late 1600s and you can see it. There are little white village churches dating back to the 1100s everywhere in Skåne because this was the kingdom of Denmark then and in the 1100s the Danes built village churches all over their kingdom. And another special thing you get here is big old manor houses. Here I stopped to watch the storks actually but then I wondered what this place was and it was open so I went in to have a look and it turned out this was an old manor in the Danish time and then when this became Sweden in the 1600s the king made it into a centre for breeding war horses and it apparently still is a massive equestrian centre. You can get really strong winds across the big open fields but today things were in my favour. Look at the trees. Clouded over actually and it looked like it would rain. It doesn't matter, much more wooded up ahead. So tonight I'm planning to camp wild, take some tracks through the forest and then camp wild. There are a couple of lakes in there. So picked up water and this is it. So I'm all set now for camping but it's coffee time. I thought I'd go here. There's a ship burial iron edged standing stones in the shape of a boat. It's down a track. That means ancient monument down here. So ship burials are a Scandinavian thing. I had never seen one before and I was really keen to see what they're like. I didn't imagine it like this at all. I'd actually imagined them to be by water but I suppose that's kind of silly. They date from around the same time as the Anglo-Saxons in England so kind of from 500 AD up to 1000 AD through the time of the Vikings and they're associated with the journey to the afterlife. Actually it turned out that the lake near here used to be a lot bigger so maybe they were by the water when they were made. I'm really hungry. I'm having these. So on this trip I knew it might be quite awkward to get food so I had brought with me exactly enough food to last the four days. So it's about four o'clock on four. Now I'm going to head back up to the main road, cut through the wood and then cross another road and then hopefully find somewhere to camp. I got distracted however because I saw some wild raspberries. Yeah I can make a pancake or something with it. Brilliant. It's quite hard to stop actually once you start. Let's go. I've got this loads more. Missed them. Perfect. Good timing as well. Okay now I've got to get through this wood. So I had to cross through one wood and then cross a main road. I'm on the main road and then into a forest. So I'm gonna try and wiggle along these tracks. I'm gonna look at this little bit of wet here to see if that's good and then if that's not good I'm gonna aim for this. I mean the track looks fine doesn't it? In Sweden wild camping is allowed anywhere as long as you're not near houses or on farmland and of course you've got to be respectful and leave no trace. So what I was really hoping for was to camp by a lake. I'd already tried the first lake actually but I'd met dog walkers there so that was no good. Muddy muddy muddy. Not going to be swimming from now on. It was actually not working out here quite as I had hoped. I was trying to find a place with a view of the lake and where I was hidden from view but it was hard to get away from the track. When I'm wild camping I often have to try out three or four places until I find a spot where I feel good. It's a thing isn't it? You either go in the open space, have the view but worry that people come or take yourself away. Don't know what to do. This little spot was really open but it was the best place with a lake view so I decided to go for it. Okay let's do it. Yeah it'll be gorgeous. So unusually for me I camped where anyone coming along the track could see me. The thing is I just don't feel quite so comfortable if people can see me but here I decided okay just do it. So tonight it's going to be pasta with fish and a sort of cheesy topping. So all I'm going to do is tip the sardines in and scatter some cheese on the top and that's it. So time for dinner. Looks good. It's a little bit alarming to see all those fish tails. I'm not used to that. I've squashed them all in. Brilliant. God that's so easy as well. It's good. It's raining actually. Oh my god it looks amazing. So now I was in the Linderedsåsen ridge area which rises to about 200 meters above sea level and on the slopes there are beech and oak forests. I like beech woods. It was close and warm and it started to rain If I do this it will definitely not be much warmer. It's always the way. That worked. We stopped. The forecast was actually for it to be a really hot day today like 30 degrees. A bit much. I was doing quite a lot of rough tracks today with loads of rough gravel. I don't know where I want to go. I have to look at the map. There are 4-5 people stopping a week in this crossing. And everyone is actually going that way. I think there is a cycle path. Oh I see. I'm trying to get it a little bit more even. It's also when you come with the horse transport it gets a bit... Yeah it is. Thanks for the help. I descended from the wooded ridge area down to this little river. From here I was going to roll over the flat plain and into the city of Kronstad. It's quite warm actually. I mean it's not boiling boiling but it is warm and it turned really windy. Just before Kronstad I stopped at an old town called Vær which was a place I was excited to see. Especially excited to see a church. Gigantic. That's not what I expected at all. I was really hoping to see inside because it has got the finest Romanesque paintings in the whole of Scandinavia. I went around and tried another door. So the church was like totted up in the 1800s but this end bit is amazing. The paintings were done in the 1100s commissioned by the Danish royal family. The Queen actually. Queen Margaret. Her family was connected to Kiev and to the Byzantine Empire which people say is why you get this strong influence of Byzantine art. I thought it was fantastic. Vær, the town, used to be a big Danish town and there are other ruins of the old town. This was a hospital in the 1500s. It apparently looked like this. I love these little reconstruction drawings. They're really sweet. This was a chapel built in the 1400s for wayfarers and the poor and the sick. Marvellous place. And actually I felt a bit not exactly sick but I was just really tired and hot. It is quite hot. A bit tired and a bit hungry. So I'm gonna have coffee and loads of these. Loads of butter. I'll just sit and be quiet. Good thing was I was nearly there. All I had to do now was ride to the other side of Kristianstad and then find a place to camp. I'm nearly there actually. So I'm aiming to go and look for somewhere to camp somewhere around here. That's a nature reserve, isn't it? Okay, yeah, so yeah, that's my idea. So I need to kind of cut through Kristianstad and yeah, basically I have no idea where I'm gonna camp but never mind. I think it's the coffee just cheers me up completely. Food is a good thing but I think it's the coffee. Ah, so nice. Really windy. I'm on the edge of Kristianstad now actually. It's quite a big town. So I think it's gonna be a bit of a muddle getting through it probably. Anyway, it was kind of a muddle. I crossed this river into town and then got confused. Well, I'm kind of messing around on the edge of Kristianstad which I never really got into. And it's kind of six o'clock and I need to get water and there's just nothing really. I needed to get water before I left the city because there wasn't much beyond. The whole place just seemed to be kind of blank roads. Finally, I found a petrol station and the very nice people in this cafe gave me water. This doesn't look very hopeful, does it? I'm heading north out of town and I'm hoping to find somewhere quite soon actually. I was hoping to camp with a view of the lake that I'd seen on the map. You can see the lake but the hill above it was a nature reserve. That was no good. It was mainly huge arable fields. I turned up a trap hoping to get into woodland and find a place with a view down to the lake. This little cop's site was promising. Have a look. Scouted up there and you can see the lake just but you're pretty visible from that road. A car just came through and I crouched down to hide. The reason I don't want to be seen is mainly for safety and for peace of mind. So I think I'm gonna drop the idea of the lake view and focus just on being somewhere really peaceful and secluded because it's just so restful if no one can see you. So that's what I'm gonna aim for, find a nice spot. That's done. Great, just jam everything in and it's time to cook dinner. Dinner today is going to be a kind of bubble and squeak-ish. I haven't actually got very much to put in it. Anyway, it's going to be potato and oh I've got nuts. Yeah, potato, onion, garlic, nuts. That's okay, that's what it's going to be. It's a bit brown. Never mind. I think I thought I might buy some, like in Germany I bought asparagus, so that was really nice but I haven't really seen anything here. So it's going to be brown. I thought I might see farm shops or stalls and things selling vegetables along the way but I hadn't. Loads of garlic. Just had a wash in my bathtub. It feels so good. I just used half a litre of water and I can wash my whole body. So nice. I quite like it when you can see roads far off. I mean it's like a sense of connection and at the same time you're in your own space. Time for tea and biscuits. So I had crossed most of Skåne. Next I'd go through the wild old no man's land between old Denmark and Sweden, a hiding place of guerrilla fighters in the 17th century and it turned out to be one of the hardest things I've ever done on a bike. I've lost my sense of humour now. That's no use is it? Where am I?