I tried to cram as much stuff in this visit as possible. Pick some high points and extreme points, visit a national park or three, check out some famous sights and get the camera sensor cleaned. Yep. The A7 sensor is covered in dust bunnies and there’s one big one almost in the middle and it has resisted all my efforts to clean it with a blower. I got it in Iceland, that volcanic dust sure sticks. But there’s a shop in Malmö where they clean camera sensors, so it was a practical option for this trip.
The southernmost point in Sweden
We took a bit of a de-tour going to Malmö, and visited Smygehuk so I could check off the most southern point of Sweden from my list. They have made sure that the visitors know that it’s as far south as you get in the country, and I was astonished when I looked at the distance markers. Moscow is closer than the northernmost point of Sweden! And the straight line to London is shorter than the drive to Ljusnedal! Gives you an idea about how big this country really is.
Crooked beech
There’s a place called Trollskogen, with a small number of dwarf beech. According to Wikipedia, there’s only about 1500 of such trees in Europe, so this tree is rare indeed. By the looks of it, the dwarf beech is to beech what the mountain birch is to birch. Smaller, and more twisted. In other words, very interesting to look at, but the light was too harsh to shoot them properly. I opted for the sunburst, which wasn’t a total success either, because there was just a little bit clouds scattering the sunlight. But I’m reasonably happy with the result, all things considered!
National parks
In case I ever want to start a project to visit all national parks in Sweden, we visited two of them today. First the Dalby Söderskog where we did the shortest trail available (800 meters, but it counts!), and I have to confess that I had never heard of this particular NP before. But the second one, Stenshuvud on the east coast of Skåne, was familiar to me by name. I took the trail to the ”head” (huvud = head), and spent a few seconds looking at the view and then concluded that it doesn’t matter if I’m standing in a national park or wherever, because when you look at the sea and the distant horizon, it looks the same. Everywhere. Stenshuvud is of course much more than this, but if I ever start checking off national parks from a list, then this short visit qualifies!
