Like A Walk By The Beach

When we first set out on friday afternoon we had of course high hopes for the evening and the coming challenges during this walk. The truth is that we almost quit after the first day... let us tell you the whole thing!

Day 1: The Rain

We left "Ödåkra" but it only took us about 5 minutes before we came across the first pieces of trash that we had to collect and throw away... we realized that doing this with the bags we had would become pretty tiresome.

We picked up the trash and kept going. We spent most of this day wondering where we were, since we have a habit of turning of our cellphones when we hike. We didn't bring a map either since we're still in Sweden, it shouldn't be that hard... We where pretty lost at times, but thanks to the compass we ended up going in the right direction atleast.

We walked mostly by the road the first day and it resulted in coming across alot of trash we had to pick up, for those of you who have no idea of what the side of a road looks like; it's something like this:

(It's not stones all of those white things... it's junk)

By this time we knew we had to get ourselves some garbage pickers, those prong things. Otherwise we'll have no knees left. Picking up trash made the walk softer than what a normal hike would've been, stopping more often. We were pretty pleased with our pace since we had Vattie with us and this being her first real hike.

We walked at least 10 kilometers and we started late afternoon... pretty good we'd say.

And at the end of the day it came, like sent from hell itself with no warning... The rain, it poured down upon us. In an instant we managed to get on the raincoats but having no protection for the legs at that time soaked us completely. We found a small collection of trees where we decided to put up the tent but with the raining the tent got even more soaked than us. It was chaos! We had to mop up the water inside the tent to get it as dry as possible before arranging it for the night. Hung our clothes as best we could inside our tent to dry them. We learned alot this night...

Like; always have two sets of clothes with you, no matter how small a walk your doing. And; Shoestrings (Making clothinglines out of) = Gold.

Day 2: The Beach Waking up to more rain and soaked equipment we discussed if we were done...

In reality we knew we couldn't quit now, we had decided to do this and for the first time not for ourselves only. This time we did it for raising awereness of a problem, that this whole world shares, and for Vattie.

So we got up, packed our things and put our soaked boots on. One thing was certain, Vattie loved the fact that we decided to keep going.

We started that day without knowing what time it was, and for the rest of the day we let it be a mystery. When we got to the shore and found the trail, we too where quite happy we kept going and from there our mood only kept getting better and better. A rest were needed by that time and the sun started to shine as well. One would think that we packed lightly for this short trip but we didn't... We required alot of water and stuff for Vattie. Remember that if you ever hike with a dog, a dog drinks alot of water and rightly so.

When the sun was high in the sky and the wind was taking its turn we acted swiftly and dried some of our equipment. Later we even managed to dry our tent and other more important stuff.

Before this, we found a dog without a leash... first we just thought it was a loose dog to someone in the vicinity. This was appearently not the case and it ran back and forth on a larger field by the beach. People who walked by seamed to not care much and whoever we asked they did not know who's dog it was.

Finally two friendly souls helped us by taking the dog with one of our extra leashes to go and find its owner, whom they thought they knew.

Later they found us and gave back our leash, wich we used as a clothline. Thank you!

We kept walking along this trail by the beach and we realized it was pretty well kept and it was almost hard to find trash along the road.

Even when looking for trash while walking it's harder than what you'd think, you almost have to train your eyes to locate junk. It's easy to forget when fixing your backpack or checking on your dog. It's almost impossible to find the small stuff when you're not hydrated enough or really tired from the walk. However sometimes it can be impossible to miss...

All in all, we enjoyed this whole day of walking. The sun became more present on the evening and there was barely a cloud in the sky to protect us from it. It made us even more aware of how much water Vattie needed. Almost everytime we stopped for a short time we gave her water, it had to be like she had constant acces to water and we think she felt like she had. Later in the tent she would even show us that she wanted water by touching her own waterbottle with her nose.

We camped in "Höganäs" that night with a beautiful sunset to top of the day. We were happy, we hadn't gotten that far that we had hoped for but for being Vatties first hike ever we felt we couldn't strain her too much either.

Day 3: The Final Day

Once again we had a whole day of walking ahead of us and this time we didn't hold anything back. We walked from Höganäs to "Mölle" on a matter of a few hours only. Vattie was now more accustomed to this kind of life than we were and loved every second of it. We really have the best dog for this kind of thing!

We met cattle and sheep along the way, even a couple of happy dogs she had a good time with.

But the highlight of the first period of this day was lunchtime when we lunched at "Krukmakariet".

We didn't expect a lunchplace to allow dogs and muddy boots just like that, but they even allowed us to store our backpacks in their workshop!

They had supernice staff and the coolest decorated restaurant ever... The food was great and the prices they took for it was definitely worth it.

So if you ever have your ways through Mölle or even just happens to be around the area, we recomend to check this place out.

(And they had a living parrot in their workshop)

Our next step was to decide wether we would stop for this time in Mölle, completing the rest of the part of the trail another time or walk for at least a bit more... We chose of course to walk little further and we're super happy that we did. The next part of that trail led up to a lighthouse on the edge of a rocky area wich was incredibly beautiful.

We walked alongside cliffs, up stairways, over hills and through one or two pastures...

Yes, in it's whole it was worth the walk!

It was a great experience and we learned alot about ourselves and many new things about Vattie. We are truly blessed to have such beautiful nature around us. Everytime we do something like this it's like our souls repairs after a hard days work.

During these walks we let our body do all the work and let our spirits heal for a bit. Remember to be there for the nature and keep it clean so that when we need to recover, it'll be there for us!

Thanks for reading our story! Thanks from The Swedish Couple and The Hiking Dog :D