Telluride-based mountain athlete and writer Kellyn Wilson reports from her first proper bikepacking trip—a ferry-hopping linkup of Sweden’s Bohuslän archipelago. Starting in Copenhagen during Fashion Week, Kellyn and her partner Cody Cirillo trade city streets and high heels for gravel roads, island ferries, wild camps, seaside saunas, and long days riding the Swedish coast.
Our route was loose and allowed for tips and suggestions from locals. All I really wanted to do was swim in the ocean, bike on some gravel, camp in some beautiful spots, and eat good seafood. The trip would be a bit of a juxtaposition: Copenhagen Fashion Week on one end, and a week of ferry-hopping and wild camping on the other. I’d be trading high heels for BOA dials, city streets for gravel roads, and crowded fashion shows for tiny islands where the only way to get around was by foot—or bike. I was also bringing along my life and travel partner, Cody Cirillo, who you may recognize from some first descents skiing or type 3 fun bike-to-ski trips. Luckily, he is no stranger to crosswinds.
What I wore, my gear list, and the fashion week portion of the trip will be coming to TOGS tomorrow, but for Detourism, we’re heading straight for the west coast of Sweden.
We loaded up the bike in the late hours of the night, discovering that with the current seat set-up, my saddle big did not have enough clearance over the back wheel. I’m 5’3”-ish, so I’ve run into this issue before, but because I wasn’t able to try out this exact configuration before the trip, I had to ditch that bag at the last second and opt for a backpack. Next time, I’ll take advantage of VOID’s custom integrated bag system, which is one of the coolest features of this bike. Because the bike portion of this trip came together at a fairly last minute, I wasn’t able to go this route, but after jerry-rigging my existing bags, I can imagine how incredible an integrated bag system designed specifically for this bike would be.
We rode to the Østerport train station because it was the first one on the line–so we knew we’d have room for bikes–and took the 4-hour ride up to Gothenburg. It’s only 4 hours away, but a world of difference. On a busy Friday afternoon, Gothenburg was lively and bustling. Unlike Copenhagen, the bike traffic lights were more of a suggestion than a rule, and adding to the chaos were trains that crisscrossed all over the streets, and heaps of construction to navigate around. We took a handful of wrong turns trying to get out of the city, but when we did, we found ourselves on bike lanes through suburban neighborhoods and golf course-adjacent hills. It felt like the American midwest. We giggled at the fact that we traveled so far and it felt so seemingly familiar.
Our first stop was to Kungälv, a charming little town that no longer felt familiar, it was undoubtedly Swedish. We ate a hearty dinner and struck up a conversation with Marty, a Lake Tahoe-based bikepacker who was doing the European Divide—a route from the tip of Northern Norway to Southern Portugal. We made our way to a little lake-side camping zone next to a bed and bre]akfast. It was freezing and windy and our chatting with Marty had us going to bed later than we planned to, so we ducked into the B&B for a room. It was essentially on an honor system— we called the number on the door to pay for the room, but the only employee was out at a raucous wrestling match. Over jeers and drunken laughter from his friends watching the fight, he relayed the door code over the phone. It took us about 10 tries for him to remember the right number in English and for us to hear him clearly enough to punch it in. It was hysterical—I was glad he was having such a fun night.
Cody and I were happy to get one good night’s sleep before camping the rest of the trip and taking advantage of Allemansrätten, or the Right of Public Access. It’s one of those ideas that sounds almost too good to be true to an American: a constitutional right in Sweden that allows everyone to freely roam, explore, and enjoy nature on public and private land. You are allowed to forage, wander, and even wild camp for a night, as long as it is out of sight of residential buildings.
For the rest of our trip, this simple idea shaped the way we traveled. We didn’t have much of a route beyond a general direction, and we didn’t need one. We could follow a road until we felt like stopping, jump in the ocean whenever we found a good swimming spot, find a place to pitch our tent for the night, and let conversations with locals and the next ferry determine what came next.
From Kungälv, we biked toward the coast, and took the ferry to the care-free, historical sailing island of Marstrand. Unbeknownst to us, we arrived on “Turn of the Century Day” where everyone wore historically accurate 1900s garb and celebrated the history of the island, at the foot of the island’s historic stone fortress. Was that ferry a plutonium-powered DeLorean model perhaps? We stuck out like sore thumbs, but immediately got into character and partook in the festivities. When in Rome!
The next day took us on a tiny little ferry–which was really more like a personal boat (so much so that we triple checked we weren’t just walking into someone’s family vacation)–that took us to a stopover in Dyrön and then to Rönnäng. Dyrön, another car-less island, was the single most picturesque town I think I’ve ever seen. It was almost like a movie set, not one thing out of place. Handmade wooden signs pointed you toward directions of the swimming spot, the public sauna, a restaurant, none more than a few minutes walk from one another. It was truly just a tiny rock in the ocean with a handful of perfect nordic houses perched atop. A very kind ceramicist welcomed us into her house and showed us her pottery. We should have stayed on Dyrön longer in hindsight, but decided to catch the next ferry continuing up north.
On the ferries we chatted with people about bikes and travel, most were Swedes on their way to or from their summer cabin on this archipelago. Everyone was tanned and happy, most toting along well-behaved babies in fairisle knit sweaters. We rode up to the northwestern tip of Tjörn to Björnholmen in search of a sauna, and spent a very luxurious evening roasting in the seaside cedar box, and jumping off into the ocean. I managed to completely forget about clenching my jaw in the crosswinds all day! Because there wasn’t a ferry to continue moving north from Tjörn, we looped back around the skerry and then made our way up the road.
Along the way we stopped at the Pilane Sculpture Park, which was truly a sight to behold. Scattered through the hills and woods were different sculptures, some small and some massive, like this head called Anna by Jaume Plensa, which towered on the ridge. A blend of modern and ancient, with walking paths that led through purple gardens and a beautiful bronze-age burial ground. We continued winding our way north, camping in some truly stunning places. The wind never let up and I was thankful to be so tired that I could still sleep through the tent’s relentless flapping.
A ways down the road from this wild-camping spot was a little town that was all but shuttered up for the fall. “See you next summer” signs hung on the restaurants and we reluctantly ate some gas station snacks we had stashed in our bags for such occasions. But while searching for any open cafe, we ended up finding something much better. When there’s no coffee, cold water is the next best thing. A short swim out from the harbor, poking out from the water, was a tiny little rock of an island that held an outstretched diving board out over the sea.
I’m not sure if anyone noticed, but diving boards have become extinct in the United States. I’m sure they slowly were removed one by one, but in my memory, all of a sudden one summer they were just gone. This diving board almost made up for all the years I’ve gone without a rickety spring loaded dive. Look at this thing! Was Wes Anderson here? From the island of Orust, we rode to Tuvesvik to find a ferry to take us to some even smaller, more remote islands to the west.
We had one front tire on the boat heading to Karingon, just about to board, when the young man taking tickets said “No bikes on this island. You can try, but the locals will be so angry that they’ll take your bikes and throw them into the harbor.” I couldn’t quite wrap my head around any of what he said and held up the line looking stunned for a few moments. We quickly got out of the way to make a new plan. Could this be true? Who doesn’t want a bike on their island? We thought that we better not risk our chances and decided to pivot to a different nearby island, Gullholmen. I guess we’ll never know how close that call may have been!
We spent the day biking around the gravel paths around beautiful, bike-friendly Gullholmen. We had some long seaside gravel stretches here where you could really let the bikes open up! The path led over rolling hills through expansive nature with turn offs to little beaches and exactly 3 restaurants and one ice cream shop. Like many of these islands, Gullholmen is a nature preserve, and while you are allowed to camp almost anywhere in Sweden, most preserves are an exception. Because of that, we had to camp back on the mainland, where we found an exceptionally beautiful spot—a perfect little perch over the sea, just behind an 18th-century stone fence. It was worth the muddy trudge to get to!
The next day, we locked our bikes behind some buildings, took our valuables out of the bag, (at this point, if someone wanted to steal my stinky socks they could take them) and took the ferry to the car-less bike-less island of Karingon. I was perplexed why a car-free island wouldn’t want bicycles, but this island was one on every list of places to go in Bohulsan, so I imagine it just gets too busy in the high season. When we arrived, and saw the narrow winding stone path roads and closely packed cottages, I could understand. I was worried the locals would throw us in the harbor for clomping around in our bike shoes, but I think the ferry attendant was exaggerating (all of the locals seemed very nice and not the bike-throwing type).
After 10 minutes here I was already scheming up how to stay a little longer. It was reminiscent of Cape Cod, but with so much Nordic charm. It was summery and sun bleached, but you could imagine dark stormy December days here, with everything lit up with Christmas lights. Skinny triangular Swedish flags outstretched in the wind made it all feel slightly medieval. Little wooden ships sat on the inside of every cottage window, and huge hydrangeas spilled over from one home’s garden into the other. The winding paths took us past galleries and shops that sold wooden clogs, all of them happily wrapping up for the summer.
We, of course, had to take a jump off of a triple decker diving board into the ocean. (I was starting to sound like a broken record with the amount of times I said “this would never fly back home!” A three story diving board on a rocky coast with no waiver to sign?!). Some kids showed me up jumping from the top while I opted for level number two. The still water was clear and crisp on this finally-not-windy-day and made it easier to identify the jelly-fish that swam along with you. Some harmless, some less-so. My toes tickled the kelp forest below as I swam back to the dock.
We chatted with locals in their bathrobes who were taking leisurely walks down for a quick swim before walking back home for breakfast. Any reason was a good one to keep delaying our return ferry by an hour until we absolutely had to leave. Our route back was from this most northern point back down to a town called Stenungsund, where we could catch the train back to Gothenburg. By some great stroke of luck, the winds started to die down on this last day which made the 50km back a breeze. We got in around dinner time and had a celebratory pizza and beer, blissfully unaware that the train line was actually under construction and not running from Stenungsund.
Discovering this in the morning led to a mad dash and pathetically begging a bus driver to allow us and our bikes on his bus down to the city. Through a thick beautiful language barrier haze, I think he said yes. He didn’t kick us off when we loaded on, at least, and he got us to Gothenburg and our train back to Copenhagen, which was all that mattered. We finished the trip back in the city where we started, drinking natural wine and eating licorice ice cream before boxing our bikes back up and heading home.
