So your here, in Stockholm. Congratulations you are in what I consider one of the world’s most beautiful cities. Stockholm is surrounded by water and forest, and built upon several small islands. I will however not give much more thought or description to the beauty that is Stockholm city; because if you are here at this website it’s because you want to get out of Stockholm and go hiking.
Your in luck as Stockholm is as I mentioned in the introduction; surrounded by forest and if you just want to buy a lot of gear, then Stockholm has some excellent outdoor gear shops.
I got the idea and inspiration from this post from Henrik over at Hiking in Finland where he put together a great post with regards to hiking in Helsinki. I thought, what the hell.. Stockholm has a lot to offer as well, and considering I had no clue up until yesterday that I could even hike around Helsinki; I would say it’s a pretty useful addition as well.
Differences of course being that Henrik has that built in German efficiency when he writes; detailed, well researched and in general a complete guide. While mine is more the American half assed version. None-the less this should guide you enough within Stockholm to have a good time. This is not going to be a general city guide to Stockholm either: there are plenty of those and you shouldn’t have any problem finding places to eat, party and sleep if that’s what you are looking for.
No matter where I go I almost exclusively use Airbnb. I always find amazing people and great deals. This can be said about Stockholm as well.
Outdoor gear shops:
Stockholm area is actually filled with outdoor gear shops, but a lot of them are outside the city center and usually combined in massive sport chains and so on. These are uninteresting for the purpose of this post as this is more a backpackers guide and not a rent a car and drive around city kind of guide. Anyway, the outdoor gear shops within the city center that I can recommend are the following:
Addnature has two locations in Stockholm – Fairly good selection of lightweight and traditional heavy gear.
Alewalds has their regular shop and an outlet shop. Fairly good selection of lightweight and traditional heavy gear
Naturkompaniet is pretty much on every street corner – though very limited in gear selections. Good if you just want Fjällräven gear.
I tend to personally gravitate towards Addnature and Alewalds but I find all three to be fairly good outdoor shops. Addnature also has a lot of climbing gear that they sell.
All of these stores have shops within the city center and within walking distance from the central station. They all sell butane, white gas and spirits.
Where to backpack:
On top of being the greatest capital city if the world, Stockholm happens to be the center of the universe when it comes to excellent hiking trails within minutes of the city center. With just a 30 minute train and bus ride you will be out of the city center and in the middle of Tyresta national park. I have hiked in and around Tyresta national park year round and always find it to be a pleasure. There is a lot of fresh water, hiking trails and excellent camp sites complete with windshelter and fire wood.
A nice little camp fire I got started one evening.. The little family in the background eventually got up the nerve to come down and chill out with me by the fire. Soon after they admitted that they had no idea how to start a fire and were very pleased I could help them out.
Tyresta national park is south of the city center and you can find a lot of information about the park here: http://www.tyresta.se/ Unfortunately while the website is pretty and the park is excellent they still haven’t gotten around to translating the site to english. In any-case google translate should do fine.
How I get to the campsites by train:
I take the city train (not subway system) towards Nynäshamn and hop off at Handen. From there I take the buss 834 to Tyresta by. That’s it. From Tyresta by you are basically in the middle of the national park. On the Tyresta website you will find maps and guides for each of the hiking sections within Tyresta national park.
These windshelters can be found throughout the Stockholm region.
There are of course many access points to get into Tyresta for example start at Alby, but for me to start in Tyresta by and work my way upwards is more natural.
While Tyresta national park is by far the easiest to get to from the city center it is definitely not the only place to hike. If you have a few weeks on you there is also the Sörmlandsleden which starts and crosses through the Tyresta national park and continues on for another 600 kilometers south of Stockholm. I have done large parts of this trail myself and find it to be highly enjoyable. For more info about this trail: http://www.sormlandsleden.se/
Tyresta is filled with beautiful nature – don’t forget to bring your camera
Then there is Roslagsleden which starts north of Stockholm and continues on for 190 kilometers http://www.norrtalje.se/info/se-och-gora/friluftsliv-och-motion/friluftsomraden/roslagsleden// If you decide to hike along Roslagsleden you will probably run across Jörgen Johansson from www.fjaderlatt.se as this is his home trail.
If you have access to a car then I would definitely suggest sleeping under the stars at Öxnö – This is about a 45 minute drive from town but it’s worth it as the parking is just 50 meters from the beach and the chances are high that you will have a nightly visitor or two. Check out my video here
This little bastard stole my shoes, my sons pants and a few other things
You can of course get to Öxnö/Gålö by train and buss – but this about 1hour and 30 minute trip. But if you want to make the journey than take the pendel tåg (city train) towards Nynäshamn, hop off at Västerhaninge and take bus 845 towards gålö to the last stop on Öxnö. From there it’s about a 1 kilometer walk to the beach.
The rocky beach at Öxnö – Great camping and view
Fishing in Stockholm
I thought I would just add this quick little bit about fishing as I personally love to fish. It is possible to fish within the city center, in fact just 1 kilometer away from the central station is where some of the largest salmon in all of Sweden are caught every year. I have both done fly fishing around the city center as well as spin fishing. For more information and catch reports you can check out the website dedicated to just fishing in central Stockholm http://www.stromstararna.se/
