The last weekend in August I brought Corinne with me on an overnighter with the local Facebook outdoor group.

I’ve been a member of this group for a while, and they do overnighters together, but every time I’ve planned to join something came up.

This overnighter was more of a camping trip than a hiking trip, and I thought that it would be perfect to bring Corinne to this. The location was Jägaregap nature reserve, on the far edge of Helgö, just north of Växjö.

I had a hard time deciding which tent I should bring, but eventually I brought the Helsport Nordmarka 6. It’s less than a kilometer from the parking lot to the far edge of Jägaregap, and with Corinnes history of being rough on gear I’d rather take the cheaper and more abrasive resistant Nordmarka.

Since we didn’t have to worry to much about weight I also brought a bag of firewood, real coffee and sausages and buns.

When we arrived there where already three guys there. They where the once who usually hike together during the group hikes.

More people joined during the evening, even though they weren’t going to spend the night there. Dario, the founder of the outdoor group, brought his wife and his daughter too.

We had a fire, and spent most of evening chatting and eating. I’m more used to hiking style camping than “fat camping” as the other guys called it. I had brought too little food, but the other guys shared both good beverages, food and cheese. It was a big difference from my usual trips, where I hike solo all day long, eats homedried food straight out of the bag and then just passes out in the tent with acing muscles. But I liked it. I usually never have a camp fire, but a fire really adds to the comfort.

Corinne was exited about everything, and it took a long time for her to wind down and be ready for sleep. Eventually she fell asleep in my arms when I left the fire and walked back and forth on the trail in the dark. I put her down on her sleeping mat and wrapped the quilt around her. She slept soundly the entire night.

One of the guys had brought “Varm och kall” (Hot and cold), that you could serve either cooled or heated. He heated it over the fire and shared it with everyone. It was really nice on the chilly evening.

Eventually we all went to sleep. I had left the top vent open on the Nordmarka. Unfortunately it started to rain during the night. It took a couple of heavy downpours for me to wake up enough to realize that I had to close the vent.

When I woke up the next morning I saw that a lot of water had rained in before I closed the vent, and I had a big puddle on the floor. Fortunately though, the floor leaned away from our sleeping gear, so nothing had gotten wet.

We had breakfast and I tried Growers cup coffee for the first time. It was a lot better than the freeze dried instant coffee I use to have. A good thing is that you can dry the bag, fill it up with new coffee and reuse it again. Good for both the environment and the wallet. After breakfast we packed up and left, as we had to be back home early.

It was nice to get out on a trip and meet some new people. It was also nice to try new ways of hiking and camping. And I think I really like this food heavy “fat camping”. But I’ll try to combine it more with canoe camping, as the canoe makes it possible to pack heavier if you’re not going to do any portages.