Gottsunda-Vandringen Linnaeus Trail

A few days ago, I decided it would be a good day for a long walk on the local Linnaeus trail, the Gottsunda-Vandringen. The weather was clear with a predicted high in the mid 70s and, since CJ was busy with the first day of a two-day conference at the University, a long solo ramble in the countryside seemed the right thing to do. So, I strapped on the walking shoes and set out around 9:00 in the morning.

I walked the two blocks to the city forest and took the now-familiar route across it to the Linnaeus trail starting point. Along the way, I took a photo of a handsome pair of Scots Pines.

Scots Pines in the City Forest

 The Linnaeus trail is documented along the way with informational signs. I took pictures of all of these I came across for my personal information. Don't feel obliged to read them.

At the start of the trail

As I may have mentioned in previous posts, the trails are marked with signs like the one below every few hundred feet. It's still easy to get off the trail when the Linnaeus suddenly veers off the apparent main trail with no warning. This happened to me more than once and I had to backtrack to find where I had missed the turn.

Linnaeus Trail marker

The Trolls Forest is part of the City Forest where they let the woods run wild. I guess this is unusual in Sweden.

Description of a swamp in the forest

A farm house in the little town of Norby

I followed the trail markers into a horse pasture in Norby.

The horse pasture

Wildflowers in the horse pasture

More wildflowers

A couple of the pasture denizens

These guys look well-fed

Some more wildflowers along the way

 For at least a mile or two I was in open pasture land.

I tried to keep to the straight and narrow

A herd of sheep across the river

One of the Spruce trees along the trail

Blackthorne Hill

I couldn't see any of the graves promised by the sign, either Early Iron Age or otherwise. Maybe the grass was too deep to see them.

Soon I entered another forest. A few minutes later, a pair of deer streaked across the trail maybe twenty feet ahead of me. It was quite exciting.

One of many gravity-operated gates along the way. It's hinged on the side and you lift it up to go through. It falls shut with a bang if you're not careful.

Some of the pines are tall!

Some variety of Oxalis. I have some of this in my native plant garden at home.

The Håagån River. Most of the walk was in the river valley.

This is the comfortable rock I sat on to eat my lunch

The cows seemed to be enjoying life

I arrived at Predikstolen, home of some cliffs I was looking forward to seeing, especially since there is an iron age fort at the summit.

The cliff known locally as "The Pulpit"

Since I didn't bring along my rope and pitons, I decided to get to the top the easy way.

I doubt the Vikings used handrails. I, however, did.

The trail was steep but manageable

The view from the top

I saw no signs of a fort. Apparently only archeologists can see it.

The last sign of the trail

Soon after the cliffs, the trail ended and I caught a bus back to Uppsala as I had planned.

It was a nice walk.