This was an amazing lake in Sweden, about 40km east of Askersund. There was a shelter here and a fire pit, and no one else around! Sweden and Finland were definitely the highlights on this trip.
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Bicycle Touring and Bikepacking
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Very nice. Did you actually make a fire? I could never be bothered to start one for myself, i'm sure with friends it would have been cool to do so though.
Yes I usually did. The shelters in Sweden and Finland generally had a supply of logs which made it pretty easy. It was useful for saving camping gas which was running low, and for drying clothes/towel etc. Keeps the mosquitoes away too!
That's great you did that, i should have given it a go at some point, just never really felt like it.
How did you find the shelters, any special resources that you used? And did you go all the way around the baltic?
I used the Danish Shelter app, and the Swedish one (Vindskyddskartan), although they are marked on most OSM maps too. The official apps have a bit of info about the camps though.
There's also an Estonian one (RMK loodusega koos) and I think a Finnish and Latvian one too, but I can't remember the names. Edit: Just found the Latvian one, it's called LVM Geo on the play store.
My route was from London to Stockholm via the Netherlands, Germany, and the west coast of Denmark. Then a ferry to Turku, cycle to Helsinki, ferry to Tallinn. Then I went through Estonia , Latvia, Lithuania and finished in Gdansk. So most of the countries bordering the Baltic sea, but I didn't go north of Turku/Stockholm. That would take too long to go all the way around the top!
Oh that's cool, i didn't know about Latvia and Estonia had also shelter systems!
It's a bit different there. I didn't actually stay in a wooden shelter in Estonia for example, but the app shows official wild camping locations. The places I stayed were designated sites that had a fire pit, long drop toilet but no wooden shelters, so I just used my tent. Still a great system though, and much better than what we have here in the UK :)