Upplandsleden
Living in Scandinavia, you are surrounded by amazing hiking opportunities. My friend Ole and I decided to check out Upplandsleden located in the Uppland province of Sweden (the same as where Stockholm is located). We hiked three full days in the middle of April.
The trail
Upplandsleden is a concatenation of many minor sections. This turns out handy, as one can walk from milestone to milestone. When planning a hike on Upplandsleden, it is ideal to use their IOS or Android app, which contains a detailed map, section descriptions and geo-coordinates for shelters and camp sites.
The trail is very well kept without sacrificing the feeling of being in the wild. This feeling is also enforced by the trail only passing very few cities.
Our hike
We estimated that it would be possible to walk around 30 kilometers per day. Upon arriving to Uppsala, we went by bus to the small city Gimo. From Gimo we joined Upplandsleden and started walking southbound. This plan left us with approximately 40 kilometers per day and thus a little wiggle room if our legs could carry us further. The terrain was fairly flat, however narrow and muddy forest paths greatly decreased the average speed. Most of the trail goes through forest while the rest consists of dirt roads and field crossings.
We brought a complete sleeping system with mat, sleeping bag and tent. We ended up using the tent for the two first days and slept in a shelter at Rastplats Kolsjön for the last night. The shelter was amazing - located next to a lake, with a practical fireplace and with dry firewood. Due to the many shelters on Upplandsleden it is possible to plan a trip sleeping only in shelters.
We packed all of our food from home to make our hike easy and efficient. As always the snacks seemed to disappear at exponential speed. To our luck, the trail passed a few supermarkets on the way. We resupplied in Knutby.
Thoughts
Wow, Upplandsleden was a great experience! I would really like to return for a summer hike, despite us actually having three sunny days (talk about being lucky).
