Why be like the other sheep?
2016 was a strange year in many ways, but I did have four big wins.
The web is full of bloggers reviewing 2016 at the moment, so I thought I might as well jump on the bandwagon and write a review post too. Continue reading “Looking Back on 2016”
Photographs from the final section of Sweden’s Kungsleden trail.
This week’s Friday Flickr album has the photos from the final stage of my Kungsleden hike. On this section I stayed in huts for the first time and experienced my best ever sauna. I was also hit with the worst weather I’d experienced on the trail since starting in Abisko two years ago, though from my photos you wouldn’t guess this as there are plenty of blue skies on show.
The total Kungsleden is around 440km (depending on which source you read). This section is 78km long.
Would I recommend it? Definitely. Would I go back and do it again? No. But only because there are so many other places I want to see.
Click on the image below to access the Flickr album.
The Kungsleden is a trail that begins in Abisko above the Arctic Circle in northern Sweden and finishes 440km later in Hemavan.
It is divided into five parts with the breaks in the sections falling where there is a road and access to public transport.
Although most people walk one or two sections, there are plenty who walk the whole path in one go. I’ve met people walking the whole way in as a little as two weeks (my mind boggles at this), but most take at least a month.
Even if you’re only walking one section you are going to have to think about what food to take with you. Continue reading “Food to Pack for the Kungsleden”
Photographs from the fourth and penultimate section of Sweden’s Kungsleden trail.
This week’s Friday Flickr is an album of photographs I took whilst walking the fourth section of the Kungsleden this summer. I’d walked the first two parts of the trail two years ago and had returned to finish it.
Last week’s Friday Flickr shows the first part of this year’s walk (the third section of the trial) and this week’s is the continuation from Jäkkvik (pop = 90), where I stayed in the village for a couple of nights, to Ammarnäs (pop = either 95 or 250 depending which source you believe).
This section is one of the quieter sections as, apart from the small village of Adolfström with its one shop, there isn’t anywhere to buy food along the way. There are a few STF huts, but as these are not manned, staying in them means arranging to borrow a key before setting off.
I spent about 10 days walking this section camping along the way.
To access the Flickr album click on the image below.
If you haven’t got naked in a sauna with a group of strangers then you haven’t experienced Sweden properly.
Be honest now. Did you click on this page expecting to be titillated by erotic tales and salacious images? If you did, I have one thing to say to you … Continue reading “Getting Naked in a Swedish Sauna”
Photographs from the Kvikkjokk to Jäkkvik section of Sweden’s Kungsleden trail.
Before I left for Sweden I wanted to set up enough Friday Flickr posts to cover my time away, so I’d at least have something appearing on my blog whilst I was sans-Wifi. Of course that didn’t happen due to some weird Flickr downtime in the UK. Thankfully everything seems to be up and working again now and so here is the first of my latest batch of Friday Flickrs.
Of course, this week’s Friday Flickr has to feature the Kungsleden.
Two years ago I walked the first two sections of this epic trail in the far north of Sweden. I was determined then to get back to finish it and this summer I got the opportunity.
This week’s Friday Flickr features photographs from the third section (the first section I walked this year) which runs from Kvikkjokk to Jäkkvik. This is one of the least walked parts as it’s on this section hikers need to be completely self-sufficient as there is nowhere to buy food along the way. Also as there are no STF huts on this section it means as well as carrying plenty of food, you also have to carry camping and cooking gear.
Most people walk it in 7 or 8 days. I walk slowly. I had a VERY heavy backpack. I knew that I’ll probably never be back here and I wanted to have time to give it the appreciation it deserves.
I spent 13 days walking just this section.
I forgot about everything that was happening in the world outside and focused on my bit of wilderness. I breathed, I relaxed, I slept, I reflected, I daydreamed, I wrote, I read, I walked. And walked. And walked some more.
I was glad when it was finished and happy to arrive in Jäkkvik, but at the same time I had a feeling of sadness that it was over and didn’t want it to end. As I got close to Jäkkvik, I sat on a rock enjoying the sunshine and gazed at the lake. I felt I’d really achieved something – I’d walked across the line of the Arctic Circle and I’d rowed across a lake for the first time. But most of all I’d proved to myself I could survive in the wilderness supported by only that which I could carry on my back.
I mentally high-fived myself, stood up and walked the last half kilometre into Jakkvik.
To access the Flickr album click on the image below.
A list and photos of everything I took on my Kungsleden hike this summer.
I had intended to write this post before I left for the Kungsleden, but as usual real life got in the way of my cyber life and I ran out of time. I still wanted to write it though, so once I arrived home I cleaned and sorted my gear and then collected it all together to take photographs before putting it away. Continue reading “Packing for the Kungsleden”
Photographs from the Kungsleden; Sweden’s spectacular Arctic wilderness.
In the summer of 2014 I walked about half of Sweden’s Kungsleden (it translates as the King’s Way or the King of Ways, depending on who you choose to believe).
The Kungsleden begins well above the Arctic Circle in Swedish Lapland and follows a trail through valleys, over mountains and across rivers and lakes. Although there are camping huts spaced roughly a day apart, for the most part this is true wilderness with the nearest road often being several days walk away.
Basic food supplies can be bought at some of the huts, but for the most part you have to carry everything you need. The food in the huts is of the dried, canned and processed variety as it all has to be brought in my snow-mobile in March when the snow is at its deepest. It then has to last till the end of summer.
Water for washing and drinking is taken from the lakes and rivers and is some of the purest I’ve ever drank (and washed in).
I’ve put some photograhs (actually, I’ve put a LOT of photographs) on Flickr, but even the best photography can’t do justice to the beauty of this place. It’s one of those places you just have to see for yourself.
Click on the image below to access the album.
I’m so happy with my new software.
Word was getting completely unwieldy.
In the past I’ve written essays, reports, letters and manuals using Microsoft Word. I even used it to write my Master’s dissertation. I’ve always been happy with it. Then I started trying to write a book. I’ve never written anything this long before and it was soon getting out of hand.
My book on the Kungsleden is gathering pace and the word count is creeping up and although this is good, I was beginning to feel very chaotic; scrolling through reams of pages whenever I needed to add or check anything was not leading to a state of authorly tranquility. I knew I needed to find a solution before I went any further.
I asked the Google gods and found that there are generally two choices of software for authors out there. I’m sure there are more, but as I have no knowledge of writing books and so don’t really know what I need until I need it, I wanted to choose something mainstream and with good reviews.
Of the two software choices – Scrivener and yWriter5 – the first is pay and the second is free. I didn’t particularly want to pay for something until I knew what I really needed and fortunately the freebie yWriter5 seemed to have everything I wanted and I only found good reviews. So without further ado, I decided to give it a go.
It was really easy to install and just as easy to figure out how everything works. I’ve copy and pasted my book from Word and been able to set each chapter up in its own folder which can then be sub-divided into different scenes. The chapters are listed in a left-hand column and by clicking on a chapter I can bring up a list of scenes. I had briefly considered setting something like this up in Word but soon realised that as every chapter would be a separate document, this would probably be even more unwieldy to use than just one long document. With yWriter5 each chapter is always easily to hand.
Once I’ve clicked on a chapter, I then have options for adding planning notes, character profiles, locations, goals and a description of the chapter as well as the actual content. Clicking on different lists reveals exactly how many, and in which, chapters each character and location has been mentioned.
I’ve been using yWriter5 for a couple of weeks now and I’m finding it very intuitive and really user-friendly. As the work on my computer becomes more organised and less chaotic I feel as though the same is happening to my brain. I’m thinking more clearly, noticing errors and repetitions, knowing where more detail is needed, fixing omissions and generally starting to feel like a real writer.
From pictures I’ve seen of Scrivener, it looks to be a lot fancier and to have even more functions to play around with. As with yWriter5 I’ve only read good reviews of Scrivener and so would like to have a test run with it to see how the two compare. For now though, I’m very happy with yWriter5 and the way it’s working for me.
I’m working hard on my book at the moment. Even to the extent of inventing my own language! (Dutlish anyone?)
After a lot of research into travel books (good excuse to do lots of reading) I’ve come to the conclusion that most books have around 200 pages and 100,000 words. Give or take 10-20%. This is reassuring because this is what I’m aiming for with the book I’m trying to write at the moment. I’m not looking at bestselling travel writers as they tend to have much longer books, but more the sort of writers you only discover when researching books on a particular region or way of travelling.
At the moment I’m about a third of the way there with around 32,000 words. I’ve divided the writing of my first draft into three phases:
Phase one was typing up my diary notes. I kept quite a detailed diary as I was walking, but as I was hand-writing and, more importantly, not wanting to add a huge notebook to my load, it was in note form. My typing up in phase one involved writing it up into proper sentences and paragraphs rather than just copying up notes. As I’m a fairly fast typist this was completed quite quickly.
I’m now working on phase two, which is much slower going. Phase two involves the factual side of my walk and means lots of research. One of my USPs (unique selling points) is that the book will be useful for anyone planning, or thinking about, a walk along the Kungsleden. Although it’s not intended as a guidebook, I do want to get quite a lot of solid information into it. One of the reasons I wanted to write this book is because so few people in the English speaking world are aware of this walk and there is very little written on it in English. The very reason I want to write the book is also the reason my research is going quite slowly – there’s very little written on it in English.
I’m finding quite a lot on the internet, but it tends to be in Swedish. Although I picked up a few Swedish words, my language skills are definitely not of the proficiency needed for reading Swedish websites. I’m ploughing through, picking out the words I know and finding myself doing a complicated process of translating into English via Dutch. Yes, Dutch. When I was in Scandinavia in February I noticed how a lot of the words in both Danish and Swedish seemed to share a similar root to Dutch. I don’t speak Dutch, but my Dutch vocabulary is far more extensive than my Swedish vocabulary and whilst I was travelling over the summer I found this came in very useful. I’m finding it just as useful now. When I’ve read through a page and got the gist of it in Dutch and English (Dutlish?), I’ll put any relevant bits into Google translate to double-check. Although it comes up with a few strange translations and the word order is sometimes rather jumbled, I’m quite impressed with it. I wouldn’t use it to translate anything of importance, say a legal document, but for my purpose it’s fine.
Once I’ve done some research and made my own notes, I’m then inserting this into whichever part of my draft I think it’ll best fit. This is all taking quite a long time. I’m aiming to have roughly 50,000 words by the end of the phase two. That’ll be half the book dedicated to my first USP. Only 18,000 words to go then …
Phase three will be dedicated to my second USP which is something along the lines of stressed, middle-aged woman/teacher gives up job and goes for a long walk in the Arctic wilderness. I think I’m going to enjoy writing this part. Not that I’m not enjoying what I’m doing at the moment, but I’m conscious of time and want to get as much done as possible before the need to pay bills means I have to go back to work.
Of course, once it’s all done, that’s only really the start of it. My first draft will be a collection of disorganised ramblings and will be in need of some serious editing. But I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
