It's very likely that I won't go on any more walks this year. I've mentioned in my previous blog post the Bergslagsleden Walk between Ånnaboda and Mogetorp was likely my last walk in 2018 and that it only would be possible to go on more walks if I will be able to borrow my mother's car on Saturdays in October. Well, my mother needed to use her car both Saturday this week and Saturday last week. Now it's still possible that I could go for a walk next Saturday but I think I will skip it even if there will be a possibility. If I skip going on a walk next Saturday it's very likely that I will have to wait until sometime in March before going on new walks. In March there will hopefully not be any snow (it's obviously possible to go on walks when there is snow on the ground but it's more tricky) and the days will be long enough (especially on March 31st 2019 when daylight savings happen and the clock is moved 1 hour forward, meaning that the the sunset will be one hour later).
So, how did the walks in 2018 go? Well, as my statistics show I only went on 7 walks in 2018 (compare that to 34 walks in 2016 and 41 walks in 2017!). Out of the 7 walks, 4 were Bohusleden walks, 2 were Östgötaleden walks and 1 was a Bergslagsleden walk. My total distance in 2018 was only 179km, compared to 1115.4km in 2017 and 808.7km in 2016. I was neither able to complete Bergslagsleden and Östgötaleden but at least I did complete Bohusleden. Actually I completed the 16 Bohusleden walks roughly within a span of 13 months (the first one taking place June 6th 2017 and the last one taking place on July 9th 2018). Other than that I did quite a lot of planning in the beginning of 2018 and I have all the maps required for finishing both European Long-Distance Path E1 through Sweden and European Long-Distance Path E6 through Sweden. Furthermore I have split up the walks into one day tours based on the availability of public transport. In either case, the remaining parts of the European Long-Distance Paths through Sweden can be seen on the map I've posted in my 2017 Summary.
But why did I go on so few walks this year? Well, it's a combination of several factors. From the middle of December 2017 to the end of July 2018 I did my master's thesis (well, it was pretty much completed by the end of June but a few administration issues had to be sorted out before it could get approved). Things got really intense near the end, especially in May and the first half of June. I was really busy with my master's thesis at that point and didn't have time to think about much else (needless to say I'm very glad to be done with university and not have to deal with the irregular schedules and sometimes insane amounts of workload, university can really mess with you). However, that was far from the only issue. In the beginning of the year there was another issue: the weather. The winter was very long this time. In 2017 the snow and ice was almost entirely gone by the middle of March when I went on the Vättefjällsleden walk. In 2018 on the other hand there was still snow in the beginning of April (as you can see in my blog posts for Bohusleden Walk #13: Krokstrand-Strömstad and Bohusleden Walk #14: Vassbotten-Porsås). Because of this I delayed my first walk of the year by almost one month. A much more significant factor that lead to so few walks in 2018 was that I was low on money and simply couldn't afford it. I only started working quite recently and my financial situation will improve greatly but at this point the days are too short in general for walks, especially if there's a significant amount of travel involved in getting to the start point of the walk. Speaking of travel: The remaining parts of European Long-Distance Paths E1 and E6 through Sweden are located quite far from Göteborg (for instance there's roughly 278km to Örebro and roughly 271km to Kisa). This means both that the travel is quite time-consuming and relatively expensive. Public transport in this situation too time-consuming and limiting as I've discussed in my previous blog post and so the only good option is to go by car. The ideal scenario would be to travel by car to a useful location (for instance Örebro or Linköping) and stay at a hostel for a couple of days. This obviously requires having a car available (but I don't have my own car yet) and taking enough time off (but the amount of time off you can take is limited). Anyway, now that I've explained the most of the reasons for going on so few walks in 2018, I will discuss the plans for the future.
As I've previously mentioned, the next walk will probably take place in March 2019 when the days are long enough and the snow is gone. I'm not sure yet what trail I will focus on finishing then but Östgötaleden is the more likely choice since the remaining Östgötaleden segments are for the most part shorter than the remaining Bergslagsleden segments (which are more suited for dealing with during summer). At this point I don't have much of a plan to be honest. I will see what the future will bring.
