June 2025

It’s already Monday! 😅 I had a great night at the camping site. It was calm and no noise from pesky humans. After check-out at 9:30am, I headed north-east along the western coastline of Vänern.

The weather was very nice for cycling: sunshine with little wind and no clouds with temperatures ranging from 19…25 °C. I’ve visited the lighthouse close to Jakobsbyn and it was really beautiful there. The cycle route No. 6 continued towards Mellerud, a small nearby town.

I had to take a longer break in Mellerud because I got tired really bad. Coffee and chocolate bars from a local gas station revived me again for the 2nd half of the tour towards Bengtsfors.

I cycled few kilometers with a cyclist from France, but the conversation was a bit difficult because of the surrounding noises (cars, wind) and language-specific accent. We parted our ways some 30ish km before Bengtsfors.

The route to Bengtsfors was simply beautiful. Lake on one side, forest on the other side of the road. Hills were steep and there were first signs of challenging terrain. The regional communities put a lot of effort to make this tourist region attractive…

Anyways, I’ve been able to pursue my daily goals and reached a local camping grounds in Bengtsfors at 8pm. It has a lot of space and it’s located directly at the lake Lelång.

116.25 km, 7h47m, 14.93 km/h, 42.45 km/h max.

Sunday. My motivation got much better after eating up all the chocolate bars I had in storage. I cycled slowly some 10 km until I reached the Göteborg Central Station. I successfully finished the Kattengattleden from Malmö to Göteborg in 3 days, which was a huge motivator and also initial test (fitness, camping equipment).

Unfortunately I realized that my planning had a flaw: there was no “Route 28” as suggested by OpenCycleMap and my waypoints didn’t match the town names on the direction signs. What a bummer! The backup plan was to use my smartphone to navigate – which increased the battery consumption significantly.

Nevertheless, I left Göteborg quickly and moved on. There wasn’t much to see on a Sunday morning around 5am (except the drunk party folks). Göteborg rather looked like a huge construction site than a city 😅 The toilet at the central station was out of order and I went to the gas station instead.

After a long phone call with mom, I stopped at a nearby gas station, bought a coffe and fuel and tried to dry my wet tent. There was enough sunshine and wind to blow it dry in like 20-30 minutes. This works great on asphalt since it absorbs some radiation from the sun and heats up the ground.

I continued the bike ride at 11am and something amazing happened: for the next 70 km (!) or approx. 5 hours of riding time, I had a strong back wind which made the hills look like a piece of cake. I would have never thought this could happen. The back wind pushed my average speed up and I could reach Trollhättan and Venersborg between 4 pm and 6 pm respectively. The weather was perfect for cycling and the camping site at Vänern lake was amazing (except the price… 400 SEK or 35 EUR for one person with bike and tent). Unfortunatelly, the water was a bit too cold for my taste on this day 😅

110.1 km, 8h34m, 12.85 km/h

Saturday started with heavy wind and rain. I packed the wet tent and started cycling around 9:30am towards Varberg and ultimately to Grimeton. One of my goals of this journey was to visit the Grimeton Radio Station, the home of the Alexanderson Long Wave Transmitter – SAQ. Bad weather couldn’t stop me! I was there and saw the huge antennas, the transmission lines, the booth and some little extras. Unfortunatelly, I lost a lot of time for sightseeing and photographs but as always: #worthit. SAQ will transmit on July 2nd and celebrate its 100th birthday!

I continued the bike tour and visited the cities of Varberg (12 km) and Kungsbacka (50+ km after Varberg). In Kungsbacka, there was a huge Pride Parade and after randomly ordering a hamburger, I met a cyclist from Austria who was trying to cycle to Nordkapp! He had to cancel his travel to Nordkapp due to a bike defect with his spokes. We had a 20 minute chat about cycling, very nice guy.

Cycling to Göteborg took much more time than expected. Even with shortcuts to save some time and favoring weather conditions, I was still some 15 km away from the city and wasn’t able to find any camping grounds. The clock showed 22:30 hours and I had troubles reaching the daily goal. This of course ended in a bad situation for me… didn’t find a stay over night and camping inside or around Göteborg was virtually impossible. Had to sleep on a bench. Awful!

I did get maybe 2 hours of sleep, I was freezing, everything hurt after a long cycling day and it took a lot of effort to stay motivated.

Cycled till midnight: 132.5 km, 9h17m, 14.25 km/h

The previous night was rainy/windy. Luckily, as I woke up, the rain stopped and it was just windy. I packed my stuff and was en route a bit late at 9:30 am.

The rest of the day I was confronted with heavy headwinds. My average speed dropped from 16 km/h down to 13 km/h. Sounds not much but it’s significant. It usually means “double punishment”: cycle harder with less speed. I’ve visited Halmstad with quite some delay and cycled on towards Falkenberg. It was very exhausting but the weather got much better towards afternoon. The winds calmed down by evening hours around 6-7pm.

I couldn’t reach my daily goal Varberg, however, I camped in Björkäng, about 15 km away from Varberg. By luck, I met a wonderful traveller couple from Germany at the campsite in Björkäng who invited me for a coffee and travel-talk. They have been travelling in Sweden and Norway for the past 6 weeks by camping van and told me a lot about the special places they visited and I surely want to visit in the next couple of years. That was worth it… great experience!

Tomorrow I’ll continue my route to Varberg and head to Grimeton before finishing the Kattegatleden in Göteburg. Will try to keep 100 km/day as long as possible…

99.3 km, 7h30m, 13.3 km/h

Very nice cycling day. The weather was perfect for cycling. First 30 km were very easy to master, however I started slacking and lost some time with shopping and breaks. The landscapes were beautiful and very pleasing.

My daily goal was to reach Halmstad, however, the weather report showed some incoming rain. I decided to camp in Laxvik just before the rain set in. That seemed to be the right decision because shortly after setting up the tent, it started raining.

There was lot of rain with changing duration and intensity, followed by strong winds. I was very tired and just slept without caring much about the noise…

108 km, 6h52m, 15.7 km/h

My bike tour started today on Wednesday, 2025-06-25. I woke up early in the morning at 5:30, packed my stuff and  had some great breakfast. The Copenhagen Central Station was some 300 meters away. The ticket price from Copenhagen to Malmö was a bit cheaper (99 DKK for ticket and 50 DKK for bike ticket, ca. 20 EUR total) than the other way around.

The weather was mixed and windy at 18 °C. The first half of the day was windy and raining. Later during the afternoon, the weather got much better – lots of sunshine and no clouds. It was windy along the coastline, less windy towards main land.

From Malmö C, I followed the route No. 3 – Sydkustleden to Helsingborg. I have visited cities of Landskrona and Helsingborg. In Helsingborg, the route was continued on Kattegatleden Cycle Route No. 1 to Göteborg.

I kept cycling until late in the evening until tiredness set in and I had to find a place to rest. After looking for a camp spot, I found a shelter few kilometers behind Brunnby where I slept over night. Great place, it was quiet and I really enjoyed it.

Total distance: 123.7 km, Ride time: 8h40m, average: 14.3 km/h

This time I’m trying something new. I’m currently on vacation and I’m about on my way to ride my bike from Copenhagen, Denmark through Sweden to Bergen, Norway. I will try to write a travel blog on a daily basis via my smartphone through the next couple of weeks.

Basically, during past couple of days, I’ve been busy packing my stuff to travel via bike and tent. It took me three days to prepare everything (clean clothes and bike, repair equipment etc.). Packed the bags by sunday morning and hurried to the central train station.

Catched the train on time and also arrived in Uelzen on time. However, the connection to Hamburg had a delay of approx. 40 min. Further delays forced me to change trains in Lüneburg in order to get to the city of Lübeck-Travemünde. I arrived about 1 hour late due to train delays but still had 3 hours left.

I killed the time at the beach before moving to the harbor. The beach of Travemünde was crowded very well, temperature was around 27 °C.

At around 18:30h I moved to the port towards Skandinavienkiel. The check-in at the port was very easy and I met some nice cyclists along the way. We went together on board and had an exclusive place for our bikes in front of the ship (bow side).

Departure was on time at 22h and the sights from the Observation/Sun Deck were amazing – the promenade, the beach and some lightning on the horizon!

The Finnlines personnel were friendly and very supportive, thanks alot to the crew!After having a dinner, I went to the cabin and passed out quickly due to a dense packed travel day. Awesome!