Vallentuna Tärnan bikepacking

It had been a while since my last longer distance bikepacking adventure and since I really tried to push myself a bit. I've also not explored much to the north of the city. That's when I found the Tärnan lake, and a nice headland in the middle of it that looked, at least on the map, like the perfect place for camp, roughly 60km from home. With the sun setting into darkness even before 4pm these days I prepared for some night riding. I also decided to go with my tent instead of the hammock this time.The first day started off well, but much of the daytime was spent riding mostly paved cycleways and roads with not a lot of nice scenery. It was also quite cloudy, so I basically just wanted to push through until I got to the last 25km which were mostly gravel. But at that point the sun was almost setting already. The riding in the dark was fun and exciting, but didn't make for many photo opportunities. Finally reaching the destination, finding a camp site suitable for a tent in rough and untouched forest terrain wasn't easy. Just pushing the bike along was quite exhausting after already riding 65km. I made it about halfway to the water before I decided to just go with the first flat spot that I came across. But it proved itself to be a good enough camp site! During the evening I tried out some of my new string lights to give the area some ambient light, and I made a small fireplace, preparing some firewood from fallen branches by using my saw and bushcraft knife. The fire lasted almost 3 hours and kept me warm and happy while making dinner and relaxing a bit.On the second day I took it pretty slow in the morning, had some breakfast and enjoyed the morning sun through the trees. When I finally had packed everything up and headed out, I started by first exploring the immediate area along the water that I didn't get to see in the dark the day before. The terrain was quite difficult, even to just walk, so I got exhausted pretty quickly and was happy when I finally made it back to the road. Much of the gravel on the way home was really nice and enjoyable. The daylight and sun made for quite nice scenery as well. Towards the end of the ride I really started to feel it in my legs, so I took it quite easy. Don't think that I'm ready for doing these distances more than two days in a row just yet!