Explore Skåne: Skåneleden: Ystad / Sandhammaren.

August 11, 2016

Explore Skåne: Skåneleden: Ystad / Sandhammaren.

Skåneleden camping. Foto: Elina Nomad

The last summer hike weekend by the sea!

So now it happened! The last summer weekend with cheap public transport season card.
What is this card?

It’s called “Summer Jojo card”. It is valid for free travel on buses and trains in Skåne during the period June 15 to August 15. So it is great for locals - not sure for travellers, as there stands 24h and 72h region tickets too.
This year the card costs 650 swedish kronas, as they every year put the price higher and higher… One good fact - the card is not personal and you can lend it to a friend or someone in the family.

It sounds strange that they say “free travel”, it costs 650kr, so it’s not free, but we save a lot of money with it! :) I figured that maybe every weekend, it costed maybe per person 200-300kr! So, yes, summer is the yo-yo very good idea for the locals.

This weekend was our last summer hike in Skåne before the card runs out, because we’ll travel to my homeland. We wanted to have nice and relaxed weekend by the sea. Therefore, we chose to go back to Ystad / Ystad Skogsgrindsvägen with bus # 322 on Friday evening. It was a beautiful evening - colors in the sky, peacefulness, and only us to camp. I did not swim this time in the evening, we only ate watermelon and liquorice candy, drank wine and just sat and watched the campfire. In the morning, I boiled coffee, ate oatmeal. A very casual friday night. Later we went to the bus stop to wait for the # 322 back to Skillinge (Line 322 from Ystad via Kåseberga).

# 322 bus was full. I heard people were talking in english and swedish that it’s really weird that the only public transport company #Skånetrafiken do not organise more #322buses through summer as #322 is the most popular. Every hour there is a bus Ystad - Skillinge. On the way the bus stops at very popular cpots (especially Ales Stenar!) : Nybrostrand, Ales Stones, Löderups beach and Sandhammaren (but you need to walk several km from the bus stop) and Skillinge! Yes, it is true that from Skillinge or after Löderups beach not many people are in the bus, but what people and we agreed on that maybe #Skånetrafiken should had an extra buses for Ales Stones / Kåseberga , as that is like British Stonehenge and people stay there longer than an hour, and when EVERYONE wants to jump on the bus at 17:00… Oh dear God! You do not want to experience that :)

In Skåne it is one of the most popular conversations to start with a stranger about local public transport problems! More popular than the weather forecast. I heard some people talking about it that they missed the last bus and they were waiting for a taxi for several hours. Not good tourism, i would say. I have noticed that it is not easy to visit several important and beautiful places in Skåne by buses/train which is sad - only reached to rich travelers by cars, or poorer hikers :) . Summer card is good, but just a little bit they need to plan and organize better.

So, our plan was to go to the beach Löderups and buy food for dinner in the store there. Sounds good, but it was not so good in reality. :) Haha! Yes, my partner did not checked where the store is exactly located, he said only, “Yes, there is a shop, we can go to the beach, buy food, and later we can wander the Skåneleden to our campsite. We do not need to go to Skillinge and hike then (my proposal).” Both of us did not look at the map of the store before we arrived at the busstop in Löderups beach- ha ha, silly us! We wanted to have no long hike that weekend, that’s why we went to the place which we liked very much from a former walk, but we bought no dinner food before we started our last weekend trip. I think we just did not think about it, because it sounds like a simple thing - the food store should be wherever we go, right? Not right in real. :)

It turned out that the grocery store is 6km away from the beach Löderup bus location. We had to walk more than we thought we should do. When we wanted to go back from Löderup-town to the beach to find Skåneleden, I thought maybe there is another bus # 570, I had noticed, passing through Löderups beach (road East Coast road), as I saw the bus location sign. I was wrong, we had to hike back to the long walk to Skåneleden. We walked through the field until Skåneleden, I was a bit grumpy, as not really the hiking shoes I imagined for no hike weekend, so, the uncomfortable foot in the soaking wet rain made me to throw off my shoes and walk barefoot ignoring the fact that it was a bit sharp plants growing there, I was just “arghhhh silly far away shop”. But as it is, it is a matter of time to work on midnfullness, right. We came out near the “Dag Hammarskjöld Backåkra” next a meditation place. It is Backåkra Nature Park.

There goes Skåneleden by Hagestad Nature Park (not at the beach, just through the woods). I have written about it and have more photos of it on my former blog post (clik here). It is on this Skåneleden ettap (click). We walked some more km or hours, and finally came out at Sandhammaren! It is Sweden’s best beach, that’s a true and believed fact! I like the beach, it reminds me my homelands shores. Now we could rest and have a good weekend at the beautiful beach. (We camped outside the park). We cooked delicious food, I swam in the cold ocean and took many photos of the sky. We had organic (or local), potatoes, mushrooms with feta and cream. Thanks to outdoorkitchen trangia, it is the best! The long walk in the rain to the long-gone shop was worth it! When it gets dark, we sat in the tent and talked and ate our favorite sweets from the brand Kung Markatta. I could feel that autumn is coming soon - it did not feel as hot as used in the evening. Oh, yes, when we finally arrived at the final destination - we were glad to see the rain clouds going away from us, and it was the first weekend (every weekend since 15th june) when we really had some bad weather during the day while hiking.

Next day was a nice chilled day - we were there all morning until noon 13. We cooked the last food / breakfast - potatoes and oatmeal, and drank café. I was so glad having fried potatoes for breakfast, not just oatmeal with blueberries! In my family weekend breakfasts were anything else than oatmeal. I’m used to having big breakfast with omlette and such, its like a small treat for the hard working week on the holidays, and different things for sandwiches and boiled eggs! When you camp, the easiest way to bring your oatmeal, obviously. But this time we had extra potatoes from dinner, so I was happy! :)

Meanwhile, he read a book, I swam a long time, although it was cold, but it gets warmer! I saw several walkers passing by us wearing wind jackets and so on, and saw me there swimming like a seal…It was not a very hot day, it was avarage, but I thought this is the last summer weekend in Skåne nature, I have to swim, and enjoy it!

I like Skåne. Maybe it’s really similar to my home country, and so I live here, and I’m going to enjoy nature here then. I was glad we had a nice weekend in the countryside by the sea and I had a lot of energy for the next week! We had a great rest. Now I have many photos to look at!

Funny that we did not want to walk much, but we figured out that we walked back in our normal km - 25km! :)