Blekingeleden hiking trip

Over the weekend, we went for another hiking trip with 3 other friends! This time, we attempted part of the Blekingeleden, which is a 240km trail winding through the countryside of Blekinge province. 

We covered a comfortable 32km over the two days, hiking through farmlands and forests.



Twice, we walked into large deforested areas and lost sight of the poles which marked the trail. The poles might had been removed when the trees were cut down or they were buried under all the fallen trees. The sun was setting, so we would need to find our way out quickly. Thank God for technology, we had compasses and GPS in our phones which gave us a general direction to follow.



We had to bash through the forests and dense vegetations. It wasn't so fun bashing through Christmas trees aka fir trees because their needle-like leaves are really prickly!



At 8 plus, we made it out of the land of christmas trees and reached our campsite Alljungen Lake. I only realized then that I have been here before on a Science field trip with my school! We camped by the lake, ate dinner and retreated into our tents at 10pm.

Just 5 minutes later, it started pouring heavily. We were really lucky to be in the tent already. The rain was accompanied by flashes of lightning and peals of thunders and we swore this must be the worst thunderstorm we have ever experienced in Sweden and possibly in Singapore. And we have to be out camping at this time. *!%^#* Do you recall during Science lessons in school, we learnt about using the time lapse between seeing the lightning and hearing the thunder to estimate the how far the lightning was from our location? I was pretty sure one of the lightnings was really near us because 1) we could 'see' the extremely bright flash of lightning even with our eyes closed, 2) the thunder was the loudest I ever heard and it sounded more like an explosion and 3) there was NO time lapse between light and sound. I finally fell asleep at 3 plus in the morning when the thunderstorm stopped.

At 7plus the next morning, we left the campsite. When we were halfway through the return journey, it started pouring heavily again. There wasn't any shelters along the trail so we put on our rain jackets and continued walking. Within 10 minutes, our shoes were totally soaked. Walking in drenched shoes definitely topped my list of factors which add to discomfort in the outdoors, okay, maybe second to mosquitoes.



In such heavy rain, everyone walks really quickly so we managed to reach our end-point almost an hour and a half earlier than expected. Hooray to warm showers and dry clothes at home!

I must have made this hiking experience sounded really terrible. Haha. But it's such terrible lost-in-forests+camped-through-thunderstorms+wet-shoes experiences that make a trip extremely memorable and toughen us.



The company was really great though we are not sure how many will sign up for another hiking trip with us. Hehe.