Summary of Walks in 2017

I'm done with the walks for 2017. Sure, I could still go on a few more walks this year. The weather is cold yes, the days are short yes, but with good planning it would be possible to finish a few more walks. However, I need to focus on other things, especially on finally obtaining my driving license (I've come far in my efforts to reach that goal but I still need more practice in certain areas). Besides, I've already walked over 1100km this year (initially I thought it would be around 1000km in total, which still would be a lot)! The complete list of walks and the statistics pertaining to the walks can be found here. Before I summarize the walks this year I will give a short background by summarizing the walks in 2015 and 2016.
As I've mentioned in the Introduction to my long-distance walk interest blog post, back in 2015 I walked almost the entirety of Bohusleden. I found the Bohusleden walks to be interesting and I wanted to walk some more in 2016. Initially my plan for 2016 was to walk the entirety of Hallandsleden, which I did. However I found that Hallandsleden is part of both of the European Long-Distance Paths going through Sweden, i.e. both E1 and E6 (see the map here). Well, after finishing Hallandsleden I continued walking parts of E1 and E6. First I walked Vildmarksleden, which goes from Skatås to Hindås near Göteborg. I then walked one part of Skåneleden from Åsljunga to Koarp. After that I walked the entire Sjuhäradsleden from Hindås to Mullsjö. Finally I also walked Gislavedsleden and also one part of Västra Vätterleden from Mölltorp to Forsvik. Already after walking Sjuhäradsleden I came to the conclusion that I want to walk the entirety of E1 and E6 through Sweden (within a couple of years).
With that goal in mind my original plan for the walks in 2017 was to finish Västra Vätterleden, walk the entire Bergslagsleden, finish Skåneleden and walk the entire Höglandsleden. To my original plan I added the goal of walking several parts of Bohusleden and taking photos (I didn't take photos when walking Bohusleden the first time). So did I complete these walks according to the plan? Well, not entirely. I started off the walks in 2017 by walking Vättlefjällsleden 12th of March. Then from the middle of March to the middle of April I almost finished Västra Vätterleden. After that I didn't focus on a specific hiking/walking trail and instead walked a bit of Höglandsleden, a bit of Bergslagsleden, a bit of Bohusleden and I finished Västra Vätterleden. In the beginning and middle of July I walked the last Bergslagsleden walks for this year and finished Höglandsleden. In the later part of July and early part of August I finished Skåneleden. On two different occasions I stayed at a hostel in Malmö and each time I went on four Skåneleden walks. After some issues with finding a hostel in Örebro or in a town near Örebro I decided to wait with finishing Bergslagsleden until next year as I surely will have a driving license by then (probably by November or December this year). Instead I decided to walk many parts of Bohusleden and now only four Bohusleden walks remain to be done. In the photo below you can see E1 and E6 through Sweden and I used blue color to mark the parts I've already walked (note that Vättlefjällsleden, most of Bohusleden and parts of Hallandsleden, i.e. other trails I've also walked, are not shown on that map).

So what remains left to do to accomplish the goal of finishing these walks in the upcoming years? Well, there are three separate goals (which I describe separately below): Finishing Bohusleden, finishing E1 through Sweden and finishing E6 through Sweden.
The only remaining parts of Bohusleden are in Tanum and Strömstad municipalities, going from Vaktarekullen in Kynnefjäll to the harbor in Strömstad. In other words stages 20 to 27 of Bohusleden are remaining (see here for the list of stages and see the overview map here). In total about 120km remains when distances to/from buses are included and I will most likely split it up into four walks. Lets continue with describing what remains in order to finish E1.
As I've mentioned before I didn't finish Bergslagsleden this year and thus there is a distance of 152km (without distances to/from buses) of the trail that remains (from Ånnaboda (northwest of Örebro) to Kloten (east of Kopparberg)). After Bergslagsleden E1 includes a 20km part of Malingebo-Klotenrundan. Then after that it continues on Smeleden which is 57km in total. Afterwards E1 includes a 25km walk on the Gangnefs fäbodsstigar trail. Next up is Siljansleden from Leksand to Mora, a distance of about 70km, Vasaloppsleden from Mora to Sälen, a disance of 90km and finally walking in mountain terrain from Sälen to the border with Norway near Grövelsjön, a distance of 160km. In total the remaining distance needed to finish E1 through Sweden is about 574km (not including distances to/from buses etc.). I don't know yet how easy or difficult it will be to organize these walks (especially as the public transport is most likely not very good in these regions of Sweden) but with a car it should be easier for obvious reasons (much more flexibility compared to only relying on public transport). The part through mountain terrain will be much more difficult to organize due to my inability to carry a heavy backpack for several days (see the blog post for Bergslagsleden Walk #1 between Ramundeboda and Gråmon for a more thorough discussion about that).
The remaining parts of E6 are much more simpler to describe. Specifically there are three trails that I will need to walk: 210km of Östgötaleden, about 300km of Sörmlandsleden and Roslagsleden which is about 190km. In total this is a distance of about 700km. Although more of E6 than of E1 remains there is an important difference; E6 goes through regions that are more populated and thus most likely has better public transport. I also guess there are more hostels in this region. Thus I guess that it won't be a huge problem other than that the walks are located far away from Göteborg (which is also the case for the remaining E1 walks). If the previous parts of E6 and the descriptions of for instance Östgötaleden and Sörmlandsleden are any indication it can also be expected that much of it will be easy walks with plenty of walking on gravel roads.
So, how do I plan to finish these walks? Well, for one thing it is clear that it will take at least 2 years (in which case it would be for instance 800km/year (assuming a large margin of about 200km in total of extra walking to/from buses etc.)). Moreover, I will most likely not have as many occasions to go on walks as this year and last year because I still start working rather than studying on university. Although university can sometimes be annoyingly time-consuming, there is a lot of flexibility (you can take time off much more frequently although you might need to catch up later). I will certainly not walk 1000km (not to mention 1100km) in a single year.
Well, walking is interesting but I can't neglect other more important things. Right now it seems likely that I will move to Poland in the near future (in a couple of years) and although I hope to finish these walks before I move to Poland I might end up finishing them as a tourist in Sweden (this isn't necessarily a problem). In either case there are also many trails in Poland (parts of E3, E8, E9 and E11 go through Poland, see the map here) which I might consider walking in the future (if and when I will live in Poland) although I will probably take it more slowly (walk shorter distances per year).
In any case, I will continue to work on the walking blog posts that remain to complete for this year (28 in total remaining!). It's not my highest priority so I will mostly work on them when I feel like it rather than focus specifically on it.