Drakamöllan

Driving south along Road 19 towards Österlen today, Linnéa and I stopped for a hike around Drakamöllan, with its sweeping grasslands, sandy steppes, and Icelandic horses grazing beneath cloudy late-summer skies.

Over ten kilometres and a few hundred metres of elevation gain, the landscape kept opening and folding around us, a world away from the flat plains closer to Kristianstad. With the heath glowing purple, patches of beech forest appearing in the folds of the hills, and clouds racing overhead, one could almost imagine being transported to the heather-clad moors of Scotland. Every now and then, the sun broke through, lighting up the grasslands before disappearing again behind the clouds.

After picking blackberries along the way, we continued down to Rigeleje, where the beach had been left entirely to itself now that the summer tourists were gone. Under a darkening sky, with waves rolling in from Hanöbukten and nobody else around, there was an immediate sense of freedom.