Day 23 – to Järnäsklubb

It was another tremendous camp location, they really aren’t hard to find here. These are warm days for late summer up here 65 degrees latitude, up to 24C today, and with being by the sea, warm nights also, dropping only to about 17C. The long daylight hours are for early summer though, by now it’s dark at 9 pm.

I redid much of yesterday’s route into the Nature Reserve this morning, but today the old back was playing tricks, so a fair bit slower, and more time on the rocky beaches, which the dog appreciated.

Walking this morning set me to thinking about the Dutch family who had arrived to my van last night at 8 pm dehydrated and worn out. For their teenage girls it can hardly have been an experience that will set them on a lifetime of hiking, more the reverse. The girls both had shorts on, whereas the parents had long trousers. Their legs were throughly bitten. They had walked from early morning for 20 kilometres with the idea, not having checked times, of getting a bus back. I know only too well that hiking for youngsters needs to be attractive, interspersed with a swim, a camp, cooking, orienteering, for example. I can remember right back to myself as a teenager, and my parents dragging us, as it must have seemed, around the Lake District. They got the balance of different activities right, and we have all developed a love for the outdoors, and indeed hiking. I fear that the two sweaty, dehydrated and insect-chewed girls will just be desperate to return home and to school..

I called in to Örnsköldsvik town for a supermarket stock-up at a very smart Co-Op. the towns up here are more functional than beautiful, as opposed to the more quaint old towns of the south. Örnsköldsvik is dominated by a brick works, and today at 25C it wasn’t especially welcoming.

I drove another hour or so north, then east away from the main E4 onto the edge of a peninsula aiming for another Nature Reserve, at Järnäsklubb. It is a group of smart holiday residences surrounding a marina, which no doubt once was made up of fishing boats, but these days they are very much in the minority to leisure vessels. This late in the summer though there are hardly any occupants in the holiday homes, the place is almost completely quiet. On a walk around I saw no one.

There’s a very smart cafe though, which opens only at weekends. The old building burned down in 2015 according to the picture frame on the new building’s wall. That does seem rather convenient, as it did look on its last legs anyway, and now they have a ‘state of the arts’ spanking new set up. It’s only a cafe though, and with Sweden’s strict alcohol laws, it means they can okay serve alcohol at less than 3%.