Adventure in Nynäshamn, a quiet coastal town an hour south of Stockholm
I wanted to explore somewhere not within walking distance of my apartment, and after some cursory Google Earth research I took the commuter train to the end of the line.
It was a beautiful sunny day outside, and here you see the Södermalm shore as the we pulled away from central station and crossed the bridge til Slussen.
I arrived at Nynäsgård, one stop before the terminal station of Nynäshamn. My trip lasted an hour, which is an impressive distance to cover just by using the SL metro card and not having to pay extra. Nynäshamn has a big ferry terminal with boats going to Visby, a popular destination off the south-east coast of Sweden. I am definately going to make a trip there soon, hopefully beating the summer crowds.
I planned to go hiking through the wilderness (of course), and the second to the last stop was closer to the forest. I managed to record the GPS coordinates of my jouney and create an animated gif of the path I took. 18.5km, my new day record!
You can see I made my way east from the train station in the direction of the peninsula, and my goal was to essentially hike to the ocean at the end of it (it’s called Norvik on the map). I had to go through some residential neighborhoods at first.
Not really much to add. Just walking through the forest and making my way towards the ocean.
Unfortunately there’s an ugly factory that occupies a great portion of the land on Norvik, and I kept my distance.
Taking self pics like the one above requires creativity and luck 🙂
Getting closer to the water.
This forest was actually a bitch to walk through at times because it was very dry and dense, and you had to push your way through a lot of pine trees and things like that. There were also a shit load of spiderwebs and flying insects which were attracted to my red shirt, which turned out to be a terrible idea. The environment wasn’t lush and soft like the forests around Nacka, but more arid and rocky.
I finally made it to the water where an old copule was fishing.
The car road was closed by a gate and a sign showing some construction plans.
It was warm but not hot, and also a slight breeze was blowing. It was perfect outside.
Hardy har har just me again.
After stopping for a while at the water, I started hiking back up the hill and continued on further towards the edge of the peninsula, in the direction of the closed road.
I came down on the other side of the hill to a barren landscape, raised for something that hadn’t yet been built.
My roomate translated this sign to say “warning for wet mud”, which really makes no fucking sense given the ground is comprised of rocks.
You can see how the refinery provides an ugly backdrop to an otherwise tranquil location.
I really love the color of the algae and how it contrasts against these rocks.
I didn’t leave any posing opportunity unexploited 😉
At this point I had basically rounded the edge of Norvik.
Here on the far side of the peninsula, it thankfully started to get more lush.
The main reason I took this picture was because I liked how the water reflects green on the left side and blue on the right.
Beautiful algae.
This next picture is straight from the camera, and was definately my favorite shot of the day.
I generally try to keep egregious photoshop lies to a minimum, but just to let you know about 90% of the images in this post are fully of them. The problem was it was really hard to get consistent shots this day in the harsh sunlight, so I spent a lot of effort finessing the images to match the color and contrast of a few reference good ones.
Here I came upon someone’s campsite.
What a spectacular day; I really wish I had a boat.
These two earthen foundations and the lonely crane that comes after are all that make up the construction they closed the road for on the back side of Norvik.
I thought I was completely alone out there, but it turns out I wasn’t–I came upon an old, fat, naked sunbathing man sleeping (I think… hopefully) on a rock, and also this other guy who was fishing.
There were lots of boats out out making me jealous.
At some point I realized I was really fucking far away from civilization, and walking along the coast wasn’t taking me any closer. I was forced to forgoe my views and head back into the forest, because I really wanted to make it back into town before my phone ran out of battery (and my stomach out of fuel, my feet out of not feeling like they were going to fall off, etc).
For a while the forest was way too thick for my liking, enough so that it blocked out a good deal of the light.
It opened up a bit as I got closer to town, and I inadvertantly crossed over my morning path to form a large crazy8 pattern for the peninsula trek.
Some nonexciting man made artifacts in the middle of nowhere.
I finally came out of the forest into a beautiful clearing.
The photo above is more or less straight from the camera, and the colors turned out perfect. The photo below was taken moments later and subsequently turned out like ass, and I spent a great deal of time trying to make it “fit in” with the others.
Oh hi just me again.
Here is a video of me talking delerioiusly to the camera.
I was pretty much over trailblazing at this point, and mainly walked down the footpath for easymode back into town.
So it turns out I wasted over 9000 hours in photoshop for this next picture, but the original looks basically the same :S
You can see in the upper right a family having a nice picnic on a bench overlooking the field.
I finally got off the peninsula, but was presented with a dilemma in the form of a freeway I had to cross with no footpath or pedestrian bridge nearby (the bridge I used in the morning was much too far noth of where I was now).
I kind of walked along the road as best as I could, squeezing in between the rail and the fence marking the refinery property.
Eventually I was forced to just run across.
And then naturally discovered there was a path just a few steps away that I didn’t notice.
So I found myself back in the neighborhood near the Nynäsgård train station where I started, and I wanted to walk the final mile into downtown Nynäshamn. In this area, most of the houses had a common shape like the one shown below. They were also predominantly painted red.
I decided I love the looks of these Swedish houses and want one just like it 🙂
Finally I come to the main road and notice humorously that Polisen is closed.
Seriously? Nynäshamn police station only does business for 14 hours per week? Bahahahaha the bank must be jealous.
Here’s the pendaltåg terminal, right by the water.
I guess the hip thing to do on a saturday afternoon is to eat icecream and sit around. I imagine life to be so uncomplicated in a place like this.
Here’s the marina where everyone was gathered.
I walked into a random restaurant and sat down at a table outside, with a nice view right by the water.
I ordered Oxfilé pasta, and it was A++ delicious.
I definately left a 30% tip on a 50$ dinner… I was in a great mood though because after 18.5 kilometers my body was death and now here I find myself with a beer and pasta with steak in it and water and blue sky and sitting outside and people walking by and warm and breeze and since I eat out at restaurants effectively never I felt generous and left a nice tip. And I will not proofread that sentence.
I wasn’t about to throw down the big bucks and then not go for desert, so I went around the corner to the icrecream place and got three scoopes infact. Perfect ending to a perfect meal.
Then I got on the train and went home.
The commuter trains are really nice here, with a wide open and comfortable layout. There was almost noone on the train except me, but as we got closer to Stockholm it filled up.
Here’s a video of some scenery.
And then I arrived back at Stockholm
The end!
