Fria bad

Picking up an Opel Mokka from OKQ8 for 1,130 SEK (a three-day rental bargain, really), we left Gothenburg just after lunch and headed south on the E6. A couple of hours later, we stood barefoot on the soft sands of my childhood dreamscape: Fria bad – or “Örestrandsbadet” as it is now more formally called.

Sometimes nicknamed the Copacabana of Helsingborg, this long beach of white sand had last featured in my life in September, when Anna and I passed it in a blur of sweat and sunshine as we approached the finish line of the HOKA Helsingborg Half Marathon. The weather then had been brilliant, and so it was again today – high summer on full display.

Watching the kids tumble through the wild waves, I felt a strange tug – not quite déjà vu, more along the lines of Mark Twain, that even if history does not repeat itself, it often rhymes. Standing there in the surf, it could well be 1985 all over again.

Later, we drove on to Lund for an evening stroll through the cobbled streets and past the university library before sharing a pizza at V.E.S.P.A. and finally collapsing into bed at Scandic Star.

À la mer

Today, Anna and I woke the kids early and caught the first Tjörn Express Bus (TEXP) at 6:05 am from the Nils Ericsson Terminal to Rönnäng, passing Angeredsbron shrouded in morning mist before arriving at the most picturesque little harbour.

Dressed in dark blue stripes and a white straw hat, I looked every bit the caricature of a summer seaside tourist as we boarded the ferry M/S Hakefjord, which first stopped at the tiny island of Åstol before continuing to Dyrön.

Having beaten the crowds, we had the island almost entirely to ourselves for the 5.4 km hike along the Dyröleden trail. With the sea calm as glass, we were treated to breathtaking views of the archipelago and even managed a skinny dip in a secluded bay on the northern side of the island before rewarding ourselves with waffles as a post-swim treat.

Considering that all buses and ferries are fully covered by Västtrafik’s “summer card” (860 SEK), we felt like true winners passing the long lines of cars crawling toward Tjörn as we returned by train from Stenungsund after one more swim on the southern side of the island.

The Alchemist

Feeling stronger by the day, I joined Anna for 18 kilometres of slow city jogging this morning. We passed the newly upgraded “Plikta” playground, where we used to spend so many hours with the kids when they were younger, and continued through the Azalea Valley before heading out over Älvsborgsbron to Hisingen for coffee at my favourite café, Alkemisten. I topped it off with a slice of banana bread which, for some reason, always reminds me of backpacker hubs and beach towns in Thailand.

The big event today, however, is that William has officially gone a full year without eating sweets, a feat rewarded not only by Anna and me, but also by his grandmother. Considering how much I struggled just to stay away for a few weeks, I am thoroughly impressed – and inspired. As such, I have decided to go all in on the “Winter Arc” concept once Anna and I return from South Africa on 21 October: a minimum of 100k running per week and no sweets, "fika" or alcohol until Christmas.

Old Magazines

With William's help, I have been cleaning out the basement, throwing away all sorts of things – including a big stack of old travel magazines. In a few cases, nostalgia got the better of me. I stumbled upon the June 2013 issue of Condé Nast Traveler, which inspired our trip with Anna's parents to Oman later that year and deepened my fascination with the Rub’al-Khali (or the “Empty Quarter,” as it is known in English). I also came across the March 2018 issue, where I first read about Manon les Suites in Copenhagen. Amid these reminders of journeys that did happen, there were also a few that did not due to the pandemic – like Goa and the Seychelles.

Otherwise, I am feeling much better today and was able to join Anna for a morning jog, maintaining a stable heart rate of 130 bpm. While I have decided to avoid high-intensity training until I have finished the antibiotics next weekend, my sanity depended on spending some time in the forest.

Cantucci

Overnight, the rain began to fall. Feeling strangely fatigued, I stayed curled up on the sofa while Anna ran 18 kilometres alone through the forest. Watching the fourth episode of Sverige och kriget with William, we followed how the tide of the war turned after Stalingrad and how Sweden eventually decided to halt the German transit traffic. I also learned something new: that the harbour in Gothenburg was used for exchanging prisoners of war between Germany and the UK.

With some luck, both the sun and my energy will return by mid next week, when we are planning to rent a car and drive down to Kivik and Österlen for a retrospective exhibition of the late photographer Elisabeth Ohlson, who sadly passed away last year. Afterwards, the plan is to show the kids Sandhammaren and stay aboard a sailing boat in Ystad for one night

Marrakech

Sixteen years ago tonight, I boarded the Moroccan Railways (ONCF) night train from Tangier Ville to Marrakech, a city I never quite left in my imagination. Departing at 9 pm in a four-berth shared couchette, it was a far cry from the Oriental Desert Express featured in Spectre. Still, there was something deeply romantic about riding into the red desert under cover of night and waking up 571 kilometres to the south with the sun rising majestically over the Atlas Mountains.

After yesterday’s great maritime adventure, which concluded with some of the best pizza in modern history at Bulldog Kitchen, today has been far less eventful. A short Active Learning Classroom (ALC) safari in the morning was followed by an hour of light weight training at Nordic Wellness Olskroken. With my running on hold, I am thankful to have no fever or other symptoms beyond the red rash – “erythema migrans”, assuming it is indeed Lyme disease. Either way, taking it easy for now feels like the wise thing to do.

Seaside

Lyme borreliosis

Given how much time I spend in the forest – and the number of ticks I have already pulled off this summer – it was probably just a matter of time before my luck ran out. With symptoms worsening in my left leg, I went to the local clinic yesterday and was prescribed a ten-day course of antibiotics for suspected Lyme borreliosis.

With that, I have decided to pause my running for now. Looking back on 51 hours of training and three races in June, a bit of rest seems well-deserved anyway. Hopefully, I will be back stronger by the end of the month as I gear up for that 100-mile ultra along Sweden’s West Coast.

Rendezvous

While helping my mother clean out the basement in Kalmar, I found an old black-and-white postcard from Versailles with a Paris street address and the words “twelve o'clock” written on the back. Looking up the address now, I see that it is next to a Korean restaurant called 'In Seoul' and just a few hundred meters from Gare du Nord, perhaps once the location of one of the many two-star hotels that dotted the area in the 1970s. 

Over a glass of Blason de Bourgogne Mâcon-Villages from southern Burgundy, the mystery of the French postcard deepens – as it often does on Rawls & Me – when things vanish into the “early haze of the seventies sun” and the synchronicity of long-gone trail runs around Lafayette Reservoir.

On the train yesterday, I managed to submit the second of the two reviews I had promised before summer. Still, a few more days of work remain before I can finalize the aviation paper. Even if I am already officially on vacation, there is enough rain in the forecast to make me optimistic about finishing the paper before August rolls around. For now, I took full advantage of the beautiful summer weather and brought the kids up to Floda for a hike along Säveån.

Last box

Eleven years after moving home from Korea, I finally unpacked the last cardboard box from “Korean Post”, long forgotten in my parents’ basement as life kept shifting, first to Umeå, then to Gothenburg. Inside: a worn copy of The Serious Hiker’s Guide to Hong Kong, a Conrad Maldives luggage tag, and a scattering of other mementos that made the whole experience feel like unsealing a time capsule from another life.

Otherwise, as I take the train back across the country, I can look back on 48 hours filled with a full marathon distance of running, an epic tandem bike ride with my mother, and lots of cold water swimming in the Baltic.