The Gotaleden Trail Route
The Gotaleden trail is a 77 km hiking trail which connects Gothenburg and Alingsås, and several smaller towns in-between. The route is largely through forest trails, but includes some on-road sections. It is divided into 9 separate stages, of between 6 and 11 kilometres distance per stage. The terrain varies from very easy (asphalt or gravel paths), to quite tricky in a few places (steep ascents and descents over the mountain next to lake Aspen, a few sections of which have safety ropes to use when the path is slippery due to rain or ice). A Strava route map can be found here thanks to fellow parkrunner Rasmus Karlsson who managed to run the entire trail in one day! I have no intentions of ever trying to replicate such a feat.
Planning and Preparation
Hiking isn’t something I do a lot of. I generally do trail runs rather than walks when exploring nature, and I haven’t been camping since a wonderful tour of Western BC and Alaska a quarter of a century ago. (It was wonderful for many reasons, but not because of the camping – I remember one night one of my travelling companions Marjan and I decided to sleep on the roof of the van and I had to flee to the tent at around 4am due to all the mosquitos trying to feast on us.) However, the Gotaleden is only 77km long, and with the route running from central Gothenburg to Alingsås several of the stages start helpfully close to a train station on that commuter route. Rather than camping, I could commute home to my nice shower and comfortable bed each evening, returning to the point I had finished the day before. A parkrun tourist had done the walk a few weeks previously and it seemed manageable. I had already run sections 2 and 3 (Skatås to Jonsered) with Angie (a parkrun tourist from Scotland whom I had met the day before) 4 years ago, and hiked the nicer half of stage 5 (Stenkullen to Floda) with a few fellow parkrunners and some other folk a couple of months ago, so it wouldn’t be completely unknown. All I needed was three rain-free days in a row (something not too common on Sweden’s beautiful but rainy west coast) and I would give it a go.
The hike itself
Day 1: Stages 1 to 3: Gothenburg tourist centre to Jonsered
Despite some very heavy rain the night before, I decided to begin this 3-day hike on Wednesday 17th July. I had worked out that this was my only option if I wanted to fit it in on consecutive days during my vacation and not miss a parkrun.
Stage 1 begins outside Gothenburg’s Tourist Centre, at Kungsportsplatsen. The first few kilometres of it are in the city centre and are not particularly enjoyable. There are too many people around, a lot of the direction signs for the trail have been vandalised with stickers over the direction arrows, and the terrain is not designed for hiking boots. Unless you are a completionist, you could easily skip it, beginning at Skatås instead.
Reaching Skatås at nearly 10km rather than 6km due to a combination of poor signage and my inability to follow signs, it was nearly 13:00. I made full use of the facililties at Skatås motioncentrum (they have a restaurant and toilets) before heading on to stage 2. As mentioned, I have done stages 2 and 3 (Skatås to Kåsjön and Kåsjön to Jonsered) previously, but that was 4 years ago, and I had let Angie handle all the navigation. On that day it had been both icy and muddy in places. This time there was no ice, but there was definitely some mud. There were also a couple of great viewpoints, and I even got to see my apartment block from one of these! I also got a bit lost at this point, but quickly found my way back onto the path.
The number of people around thinned out a lot within a couple of kilometres from Skatås, and everyone I encountered said “Hej hej” on the way past. People are more prone to acknowledge you in the middle of nowhere than in town. I told Michael that this was to let people know you were not a threat, and safer than a bear. His response was that telling people you are not a threat seems like a huge red flag, and he would pick the bear. I actually encountered a wild boar en route to Jonsered. (At least I’m pretty sure that’s what it was.) It ran across the path behind me in what seemed like some kind of panic, and then ran back across around 30 seconds later. I got a short glimpse of something long, fairly lean, not too tall, with black or dark brown thick fur and a tail. It was too big and heavy to be a dog (and there were no possible owners around) and, having a very limited knowledge of what wild animals can be found here and what they look like, I was concerned that it may have been a wolf. When I told Michael, he said it was definitely a hare! (This is a standing joke, since he saw a deer on the street outside our apartment once when we lived nearer to Skatås – I didn’t believe him and asked if he had actually seen a hare. He will never let me forget this.) This freaked me out a little, and I wished I owned a pair of walking poles – both to help navigate the muddy sections, and as potential weapons in case of being attacked by a wild animal. Though Michael kindly pointed out that even I am probably capable of winning a fist fight against a hare. Thankfully I had no further close encounters with anything other than over friendly dogs, and a few horses that were not in a field but just hanging out in the middle of the path around 10km from the end of the trail.
I reached Kåsjön around 16:00 and took the opportunity to sit down on a bench and eat a sandwich. A nice older lady pushing a bike stopped and spoke to me for a few minutes, making small talk. Michael had said that three people had tried to talk to him the other day when he walked into town (about 6km) because the trams were overcrowded due to the Gothia Cup. He just points at his earphones and ignores them. I actually like it when random people talk to me. This is partly because it happens here much more rarely than in Scotland. It is almost always also older people who do this, and I am aware that I might be one of the only people who has a conversation with them that day. It’s also a good test of my Swedish, because my accent and grammar are both appalling. Older folk struggle more to understand me due to this, so if we can have a conversation where we both get the gist of it then I count that as a win.
There are toilet facilities at Kåsjön, if you head off the path for about 150 metres. However, there is only one, so I had to wait for a while due to the number of bathers taking advantage of the better-than-expected weather that afternoon. It was threatening to rain though. I remembered this section as being hilly, rocky underfoot, and rather muddy. I had hoped it would be less muddy than I remembered, but if anything it was worse. A German couple who were coming the other way were also going to some lengths to avoid the worst of the mud, exclaiming their surprise. The guy said to me “It’s rather muddy” and I said “The whole thing is muddy” then for some reason switched to Swedish to wish them good luck. A reasonable rule of thumb is that if a stranger in Sweden speaks English to you before you’ve said anything, then they probably don’t speak Swedish. Unless they are Swedish.
There were some wide paths and some asphalt, but it felt more wild and remote than the area around Skatås. The exception to this was the final 700 metres or so, where you take a walkway over the dual carriageway, then alongside a road and through some houses before emerging near the train station. I had just missed a train, but they are every 30 minutes so it wasn’t a problem. The train wasn’t crowded, but the tram from centralstationen was. I managed to get a seat across from a father and son wearing Gothia Cup tops, and asked how the competition was going for them. Tired and hungry, I ate, showered, dealt with the damage to my right foot (blisters on the heel and small toe), and transferred the hundred or so photos I had taken to my PC. It was quite late before I got to bed, ready to do it all again the following day.
