As I mentioned yesterday, I did a bicycle trip to check out some new places. Cycling the tarmac roads is boring, so I took the gravel road that runs almost parallel with the paved road. There are loads and loads of small roads around here, part of them thanks to the military installations that were decommissioned a few years ago. And those tarmac roads are thanks to the airplane landing strips, which are finally visible on the maps and satellite pictures after the military decommission. I was quite surprised the first time I came across the air strips when there was no hint on the map that such exist!

But I digress.

So I was cycling along this gravel road when I came across a spot where the Boxing Day storm had felled a bunch of trees, transforming the road into an obstacle course. I could’ve turned back and taken the tarmac road instead, but like I said, it’s boring. So I carried the bike over the tree trunks, or went around them, or in some cases, crawled under. With the bike. The worst of the storm damage is normally concentrated on separated spots, so I figured that the rest of the road can’t be as bad. It turned out that it was… luckily it wasn’t too far until it joined the tarmac road again and I could actually start riding the bike.

I wanted to check out some of the riverside features, so I took a tiny little side road. Of course, that road was covered with fallen trees as well, but I got there in the end. The Ljusnanleden trail follows close to the river here, so I followed it to see what I could find. I found a steep embankment where the trails goes all the way down to the water. The embankment is about 35-40m high at this point and got me wondering why the storm only uprooted the trees across the road and not here where it would’ve created an open view… Anyway, the trail was tricky at first with the pine needles and cones rolling under foot.  And then it got worse. Even steeper, and now covered with fine sand. I mean, there’s steep and then there’s steep. Any steeper and they might as well put out some parachutes and let people jump down! There’s a railing though, which is starting to rot badly and in some places it had already fallen down, but it provided some support anyway. Mostly I just glided from tree to tree and hung on for dear life. On the way up, without that railing you’d have to get down on hands and knees to get a safe hold. Not kidding!

There was one nice looking island in the river but this was completely the wrong time of day to shoot it. I only had the Powershot with me anyway, for scouting purposes. Considering the direction where the river runs here, I’m a little bit on the wrong side. I get backlight most of the day, so it would have to be an early morning or late evening shoot to make these spots work. Maybe one day I will.

I was going to check out some more spots, but every single forest road I took had windfalls on them. It got downright ridiculous – I was there to ride the bike, not carry it! So I gave up and took the tarmac road back home. A boring ride was better than no ride.