Day 15 – to Mörkret

I spent most of the morning watching Roja play with Maya, the 2 year old husky dog of the German guy sharing my overnight spot.

They were in and out of the river and play fighting over sticks. The guy has some serious dog technology. Being a husky, she is likely to tear off when off the lead, and he has a gps tracker attached to her. She tore off twice this morning. His tracker shows where she is, but he still cannot get her, and she wouldn’t return until I blew my dog whistle, which worked both times. There’s a lot to be said for the old fashioned solutions… though the GPS was good for showing the distance and speed she had covered.

Being a husky also, he has trained her to pull his bike around the local park, something called a dog scooter. Roja’s a bit older now, he just turns his nose up at that sort of thing.

By the time I left it was after 11. I picked up some bread at a tiny shop in the village of Storagen then drove to Fulufjället National Park, which was, as I expected, very busy. The car parks were bursting with all sorts of tourist vehicle. It’s the penultimate week of the Swedish school vacations, and about as busy as it gets. But as ever in such places, the majority of people didn’t walk far, and mingled around the cafe and visitors’ centre. My original plan had been to hike a couple of days here, but this afternoon I just settled for the couple of kilometres to the country’s highest waterfall, Njupeskär.

It is interesting to compare the National Park with the Lake District and Dales back home. This similarly gets a lot of foot traffic, and the vast majority concentrated in the short summer break. There is a delicate environment, much of it damaged by hikers walking off the track, even a couple of metres off the track. Hence the huge amount of boardwalk. This does have effect, almost completely, of making hikers stay on track. Even the sections that are not boardwalked are constructed for that purpose also. The Park may lose something in its appearance, and the planking may be expensive, but it does prevent erosion, and save flora and fauna from being trodden on.

I had thought it may be difficult to get a peaceful wild camp spot, but in actual fact it was as easy as ever, just back to the village of Mörkret, and a kilometre or so down an unsealed road adjacent to the river, Fulan, and I have the perfect place.

I was in camp by 4 pm, a chance to finish a book, write a couple of reviews, and just about to watch the Hundred cricket, though that may well not hold my attention..