The walk was 110km of trails, mostly on the King's Trail, in the north of Sweden inside the arctic circle in Lapland. You'd walk at your own pace, camping anywhere you could find a suitable spot, and complete the walk in anything up to 9 days. The organisers would tick you off at checkpoints and provide you with dry expedition food and fuel for your stove at the start and two other points on the route. For the rest, you were on your own; carrying all your things, navigating between checkpoints, deciding where to camp. If you wanted to pull out you had to walk back to the start, walk to the finish or pay for a helicopter!
We turned the walk into just under two weeks in Sweden, having never been there before. Starting with two nights in Copenhagen, a wonderful if expensive city. We spent probably too much time on our feet exploring given the walking we had ahead of us. It's a characterful place with great museums (photography museum and the design and architecture museums were my favourites) wonderful cafes and epic places to eat and drink. Restaurant Prinsen is a pricey, but utterly wonderful, place to eat if you want to try Swedish food. The old town is pretty but busy.
Anyway! We'd booked a night train North to Kiruna, it's around a 1500km, train is cheaper than flying (even when booking your own compartment) and it saves a nights accommodation. Oh and I love travelling by train! The train set off at around 7pm and arrived 2pm the following day, it was comfortable, well designed and full of excited people in outdoor gear with big packs on their way for some good walking. We'd acquired a bottle of Sloe Gin for our hip flasks for the walk and the remainder in the bottle served as a nightcap to sooth you into a night of sliding gentle from head to foot end of the bed as the train went round corners
Kiruna, it turns out, has one thing of note in the town, one of the world deepest iron ore mines! As a result the vibe of the town is a little weird as it's been constructed predominantly to house people who work in the mine. The visitors centre has a model cheerily showing how the are going to move the whole town centre and some housing a mile away to allow for the mine itself to expand and dig further down wards. The hotel we'd picked was basic, but clean, spacious and friendly and a short walk from the base camp area for the work where you registered, picked up your map and hiking log book as well as your food and stove gas for the first part of the walk. There was also a merchandise shop, kit shop for those forgotten items and a bar...!
Our final sleep in a comfy bed and we were off for an early start. Packing up our packs, filling water bottles, walking to the base camp where we could leave a drop bag to pick up at the finish and boarding a bus for a 1hr trip to the start at Nikkalaokta. Very quickly you are on a road with no traffic heading into the wilderness, and the start was at a mountain lodge set in beautiful surroundings.
After a quick cuppa, getting out trail log books signed off and a quick pack check we started walking in the 1pm start group. The weather had started clouding over a little and the first 5-6k were quite crowded and hard to walk at your own pace. Some people at the front of the pack were running it and didn't seem to be carrying the mandatory tent! The landscape was dominated by beautiful green Birch forest and we got our first introduction to the rocky paths we were to become used to and the areas of walkway that were boarded out with 2-3 narrow planks of wood to cross streams or boggy areas.
What met us at around the 6km mark was a surprise, Lap-Donalds...! A pop up burger bar serving just one item; reindeer burgers and they were delicious :) The rain started, just light at this point so we fairly quickly moved on after taking some atmospheric photos
On this first day we had bags of energy, so went forwards at quite a pace. I estimate we covered just over 20k between 1pm and 6pm. We were walking at the foot of big snow capped mountains, through trees and then out into the open. It felt fairly warm and comfortable, t-shirt weather when the sun was out, but that changed quickly when it clouded over and the wind picked up. We met the big, lazy arctic mosquitos, which turned out could bite right through thin clothing layers... The only downside was that my pack was starting to rub, on my hips and no amount of adjusting could get that to stop, not great for day 1. To be fair I've had this every time I've walked with a sizeable pack as I prefer to adjust them tight on the hips so my shoulders and back take less of the weight.
We made it to the first checkpoint (Kebnekaire), which was at one of the trail huts. It had a busy friendly vibe, flushing loos and free cake, tea and coffee :) It was good to get a look at how a hut works, if you were walking it alone you could (with good planning) do it with a day pack walking hut to hut. We fired up the stove in the grounds of the hut to cook dinner, our first taste of the freeze dried food we'd be eating the rest of the walk, not bad! We were careful to take our boots off to air our feet and once fed and watered we walked a little further on to a wide open valley where we found a flat patch of ground perfect to pitch the tent for our first nights camping.
Pitching the tent was easy, and it was nice to unpack, get into warm dry clothes and have a sweet snack before bed. I wanted to write up a diary of each day before I slept and forgot the details and we both had repairs to do; me to patch up a dry bag hole with gorilla tape and Matt to sew back up the holes his belt seemed to be making in his tshirt.
Day 2 and I woke at around 7 warm and dry, always something to be celebrated when camping I've found. I'd woken at several other points in the night as I adjusted to the sleeping bag (I'm a wriggler) and when the sun rose at around 3am...! 4 hours of not-quite-darkness a night made for interesting sleeping, but from this point on tiredness took over and sleeping wasn't an issue. It was dry and almost sunny so we took our time breaking camp, having breakfast and packing up. Matt had bought filter coffee and a portable mini coffee strainer, which despite me thinking this would be unusual seemed common amongst the Scandinavian participants! The morning freeze dried breakfasts weren't bad, adding hot water to them ended up with a hot musli and fruit type concoction which I quite liked.
The freeze dried meals for lunch and dinner were pretty good, varied and some of the more flavoursome. After day 3 however I had constant and fairly nasty indigestion, so they definitely aren't something I can live on for long! You could drink the water from the streams and rivers in the area, the rules are to only drink from running water (not pools, ponds or lakes) and that you fill your bottle upstream of a bridge and wash yourself/your things downstream.
Another part of the wild camping experience layers on top of all this, you leave to trace. Now that covers everything from taking all your rubbish with you (and carrying it to the end), leaving your camping spot as you found it and dealing with how to go to the toilet... You can wee anywhere, as long as it's 20m away from any streams, rivers or water sources. Poos however, you need to dig a hole, do your business into the hole, and re-cover it. Or if the ground is rocky cover it with rocks. Any toilet paper you use you have to carry to the finish or burn it and then bury, we chose to burn it! On the more remote sections of the walk you could see people eyeing up the larger boulders for somewhere to go, and with so many walkers it was a challenge to find somewhere that hadn't already been used by at least one other person... There were toilets, mostly long drop composting types, on the route, but they were quite few and far between, and rarely there when you needed them! I had a plastic zip lock bag containing loo roll, hand sanitiser and a lighter that was always in an accessible rucksack pocket.
The second day of walking felt really hard work! We only managed around 18-20k, and the features I was ticking off on the map just seemed to take ages to arrive. The weather was also really changeable so we were stopping quite often to add and remove layers and waterproofs. The checkpoint for today was Singi, a remote spot with a few tents for checkpoints, tent and bucket loos but also a food tent making you free reindeer and lingonberry wraps - yum! Also at the checkpoint was a man with one leg doing the trek on rugged off road crutches, making a good pace he was too, although he found the wooden walkways difficult.
My hips were getting more sore, with bright red streaks where the various seams from tops and trousers were, literally, making their mark. We'd eaten well and kept hydrated, but I think the fatigue of the first day, and our bodies still adjusting to the realities of walking with big packs was taking it's toll. I was exhausted by 3pm and we stopped on a flat meadow just tucked down wind of a small hill to camp. Tiredness meant we pitched out tunnel tent the wrong way for the wind direction and we both felt a bit fed up when we realised and had to turn it by 90 degrees. Once we were in and had eaten I just wanted to sleep, I'd tried to air my feet in their rare time out of the boots and they'd got really cold. This wasn't good, they didn't get warm until I started walking again the following day... I did sleep like a log though!
Day three started with sun, but quite cool temperatures. From this point onwards, due to the temperature and the state of my hair, I was wearing a hat at all times! It was a windy day, with around an hour of really heavy rain, which tested my waterproofs to the extreme. They never seem to be fully waterproof when you are wearing a pack which allows the water to pool on the fabric.
We ticked off two checkpoints and around 25km today, walking at a decent pace. The first checkpoint was Salka was equipped with a sauna and cold river to dip in afterwards, we didn't partake! This was also a checkpoint where you could pick up extra food and gas for the stove. So the pack was at it's heaviest for the one big hill of the walk... My pace slowed right down on the ascents, the pack suddenly feeling far more heavy than on the flats. Luckily the rain had stopped so we took frequent breaks and kept eating and drinking to avoid too much fatigue. The soles of my feet were getting sore from all the time on my feet with the big pack and I was getting a couple of knee twinges from tight complaining muscles. I'm not sure if it's beneficial or not to be able to name the muscles that are getting angry!
We reached the summit of the hill and were greeted with amazing views down the next valley
It was literally downhill from there to the next checkpoint (Singi), which was a small gathering of tents on a windswept spot near a mountain hut. But it served hot tea, coffee and amazing chocolate brownies so all was forgiven! This was the point where we turned from walking West to walking North and picked up the official Kungsleden (King's Trail). We arrived at the checkpoint at around 5pm, having been walking since 9am, so camped pretty soon after it having found a nice squishy meadow shelter from the wind. There was a small shop at the checkpoint so we picked up some treats and a beer each - well deserved!
We were both happy but tired so were snuggled into our sleeping bags from around 8pm! From this point on I did not have a warm nights sleep, despite the layers and the extra liners I was cold and had frozen feet every night. Sleeping bag strategy definitely needs reviewing if we do a similar trip in future. The wind was a big factor though, as the draughts came into the tent and seemingly right through the sleeping bag.
Lots of rain fell overnight, as well as the chilly wind and it was raining still as we packed down the tent. We were well practiced as it by this stage however, so it wasn't too challenging. The morning was very wet and rainy, this meant the wooden board walks got very slippy and I fell off one landing right on the base of my spine leading to a cracking headache. I saw lots of other people fall either off the boards or tired and tripping on the rough, rocky tracks.
Gradually the rain eased off and we were walking on flat ground next to beautiful lakes and beaches
The afternoon was bright and sunny, and as stopped off at Alesjaure checkpoint, which was another mountain hut with a shop, hot drinks and cake for sale - the luxury!! It was also the final food and fuel pick up point, but we didn't need much as we were cracking on nicely at this point and wondering if we could finish the following day instead of two more days...
We got into a really nice rhythm of walking for the rest of the afternoon, enjoying the fabulous scenery and the opportunity it gives you to be in the moment just looking around and lapping up the experience. We stopped to take lots of photos and got a few rainbows.
After another 25k day we camped in a slightly windswept spot, but flat just below a small dip in a large and beautiful valley. Having gone slightly overboard on the food at the mountain hut only a hot drink and snacks were needed before we snuggled into our sleeping bags for the night
At 3am I was dozing after my customary waking for the sunrise, I could hear a snuffling barking noise and the distance ringing of a bell. Matt woke up and asked what the noise was, "Reindeer" I said sleepily. He launched himself out of his bag, grabbed his camera, peered out of the tent and found I was right; a herd of reindeer grazing just on the brow of the hill we were camped on! I even managed to prise myself out of the relative warmth of the sleeping bag to take a look.
When we got up later that morning they re appeared, a nice family group with little ones, snuck up on our tent. They are very quiet and without the bells worn by some of the group you would probably miss them completely as they blend in so well. It was a privilege to walk and sleep on land owned and used by the traditional Sami people who are the Reindeer herders :)
We woke up dry for what would turn out to be our final day on the trail. The sun broke through the clouds, and we set off and warmed up with the first 3k to our final checkpoint, Kieron. The checkpoint was super friendly, and just a group of tents, but one served hot tea and freshly cooked pancakes :)
The final 15k were something like a greatest hits of the trail, beautiful views, back into the tree line for wonderful birch forests and raging glacial rivers and bridges. It was stunning, so we kept stopping to soak it all up.
The soles of my feet started complaining from pretty early in the day, just too much weight and days on feet. The hip chafing wasn't complaining so much after the first 30 mintues of the day...!
The atmosphere over the final few km was brilliant, lots of friendly walkers and places to stop and take in all the views. We found the offical start/end to the trail
And it was a short walk to the finish area. Finishing was fantastic, a great atmosphere with the bar right next to the finish line so everyone got clapped in.
Priorities for us were to get our trail booked stamped and get our medals, drop all the rubbish we'd been carrying for the last 5 days in the recycling, take our boots off and get them cleaned and then have a beer! Because we'd arrived a day early we were faced with another night of no showers and the tent, so went into the "tourist station", effectively a huge mountain hut set up to ask about a room. I think it's the most we've paid for a room in our lives, but it was so worth it for the extra long hot shower and an actual bed! Our drop bag of clean clothes was retrieved and we felt human again :)
We headed to the bar, grabbed some amazing dinner in the mountain hut, had another beer watching other walkers arrive and cheering them in. At around 8pm we were both nodding off so we headed to bed!! Sadly I woken in the early hours having been hit hard by a cold I'd been fighting off for the last few days, with the shivers and muscle aches and everything. All we had to do that day was move 30 minutes walk down the road to the Abisko Mountain Lodge and chill out - perfect!
The Abisko Mountain Lodge was an absolutely wonderful place, real cosy vibe with friendly staff, wonderful rooms, lots of blankets, homemade cake and an excellent restaurant powered entirely by primus stove fuel! Coudn't have wished for a better place to stay.
From there we caught the night train from Abisko station, 5 minutes walk from the lodge, back to Stockholm, which was another opportunity to hear stories from other trekkers.
I loved the walk, it was very well organised and a great way to explore a truly remote part of the world. I may have already ordered the trail guide with a view to doing more of the King's Trail by ourselves :)
Kit list;
Vango 3 person tunnel tent, the tent we already owned, not the lightest but performed really well with the wind and rain
Osprey Arial AG 65 litre pack, the only item bought new for the trip. Great bag and well designed, love the new Anti Gravity tech with sprung back and waist. Chafing problem happens to me with all packs, so not sure if I could blame this bag.
Fjallraven Keb curved trekking trousers, rare to find outdoor trousers that fit but these do; warm, rugged and perfect for the job
120 weight ice breaker merino tshirts x 2
240 weight ice breaker merino long sleeve zip top
Liner socks x 3
Smart wool hiking socks x 2
First aid kit - focus on blisters and bites!
Loo kit
Wash kit - wet wipes, tooth brush and tooth paste, lip balm, sun cream, deodorant, generic wash stuff for use on face, hands, cooking things! Small travel towel
1 litre water bottle
75cl flask to carry hot water
Enamel mug
Spork
Pen knife
Hip flask with sloe gin :)
Dried fruit, nut mix and snickers
North face waterproof jacket and mountain equipment waterproof trousers
RAB 500 weight down jacket
Thermarest sleeping mat
Deuter 2 season light weight sleeping bag (bad decision on the sleeping bag strategy, wouldn't recommend!)
Fleece sleeping bag liner
Silk sleeping bag liner
Hat, waterproof sealskin gloves, buff
Headtorch and eye mask (neither were used)
Sleep wear; 400 weight merino leggings, smart wool mountaineering socks, 200 icebreaker t-shirt, 260 icebreaker ling sleeved top
Meindl walking boots (nearly 10 years old!)
Black diamond walking poles
Map case, map and compass
Costs;
The only new kit item I needed was my pack, £200 with BMC discount
Flights £250 pp return
Accommodation in Kiruna £45 pp for a double room with breakfast
Accommodation in Abisko £95 pp for a double room with breakfast - much more for the room in the tourist station when we arrived a day early...!
Night trains £240 pp return
Entry fee to event £220 pp
Food and drink outside of the walk was very pricey, higher than London prices, so budget carefully!
