I travel quite often, some would say. Usually I’m only away for a couple of days. Recently I did a trip by car which took me a bit longer than that. The idea was sparked by the need of doing two work-related visits in Sweden. I figured I could take some time off and drive a bit further..

I’m not much of a planner though. I see how things turn out or choose what to do the day before I do it. The trip ended up looking like this.

First determined stop was Stockholm, where I’d have to work for a week. I planned four days of travelling: Friday-Monday. Tuesday morning I’d show up in the Stockholm office.
I’d pack the evening before and drive to my parents, to get a head start the next morning by avoiding traffic.

We did a stop by Schiphol to pick up some stuff, then kept driving. First photos were made by the time evening rolled around.

In Denmark I felt like stretching my legs quickly and noticed we might be close to a beach. We were.

After, we kept driving. It turned dark quickly. By the time we reached the Storebæltsbroen, the sun was setting.
A few years back, I did a weekend trip to southern Sweden with some friends. There and back in three days, which really isn’t that long.
We found a nice place to sleep back then, I wanted to go there again, without having an address. All I knew was what I wanted to find back then.
When after 12PM we still hadn’t found it, we stopped at the first bit of open grass and set up the tent for the first night. I was a bit disappointed.

In the morning however, my companion got up before me and told me there’s some buildings. I got out of the tent and thought I recognized them. I went to brush my teeth. They were identical.

Less than 500 meters from our chosen camping spot, I made these pictures. Different year, different cars, different light, different angle… but?

 

Fuck yeah.

We had lunch at the beach. Beautiful weather. At this point, the second day of the trip, we had a tent, sleeping bags and food, but didn’t think further yet. Took us a few days before we got to a shop before closing hour and buy some more camping gear.

As said before, I’m not much of a planning type guy. All I had was some route that might be interesting. We drove from town to town, stopping at mostly random places, whenever one noticed something that might be interesting.

By the way, my companion, I didn’t know her until two days before I left. We met at a Couchsurfing meeting in Ghent. Got chatting, she was about to leave to the Americas in a few weeks and had spare time on her hands. I had a free seat and travelling together is more fun! She only had to find a cheap flight back. Soon after meeting, she had considered the offer and signed up.

Nights were fairly cold. I had one warmer sleeping bag, one colder. I lent her the warmer one, though she didn’t seem to believe that :). The third night we installed the tent in a shelter by the water. This time we also had a decent camp fire, plus an actual cooker. Warm food and a warm fire for the first time.

Later on in the trip the two sleeping bags combined would keep me warm. Turned out to be a good thing to have two.

We didn’t progress a lot during the weekend. Since I needed to be in Stockholm on Tuesday, we had some driving to do on Monday. As we neared Stockholm, we checked out a former coastal defense. The cold nights had worn a bit off on us. I felt tired and tried to find a good camping. Eventually we ended up in Bredäng with a shared room and some actual beds. And a run by the water. And a sauna. It’s good fun to see Estonians bragging about ‘Estonian sauna’, heat the place up and run out .. leaving you there to sit it out.

Next time: Stuck in traffic. Stockholm. Won’t be a long one.