Find your inner Huckleberry Finn on a log raft in Sweden

Not much beats the serenity of floating down a river with a bunch of friends on a raft. It’s even better when you’ve built the raft with your own hands in the wilds of Sweden

The Klarälven (the ‘Clean River’ in Swedish) is Sweden’s longest river, flowing 460km from Lake Rogan to Karlstad in Norway. Over the years the river has often been used for log driving – towing felled timber downstream to a mill by boat – so it makes sense that the best way to explore it is by hand built wooden rafts Huckleberry Finn style!

The Klarälven River

Travelling down the Klarälven River in Sweden, for one week, on a log raft. Produced by Alastair Humphreys and Haglöfs. www.alastairhumphreys.com www.haglofs.com Music by Temujin Doran Violin – Elena Moon Park – http://www.rabbitdays.com/ Vocals & Shruti box – Saideh Eftekhari – https://soundcloud.com/saideh-eftekhari If you enjoy wild camping you have a responsibility to leave the wilderness as pristine as you found it.

There really is just nothing better than the sense of slow adventure you get on a multi day boat trip like this. No urgency, no emails, just good times with friends as you slowly drift down stream. Wild camping at night, cooking on the campfire, and bathing in the cool river waters. Just watching the world go by on nature’s own highway. Sometimes that’s all you need to re-connect with the world around you and remember what’s really important in life.

Alastair Humphreys elaborates on the experience:

“It took a few hours, plenty of clove hitches, and several hundred metres of rope to turn a pile of logs into a beautiful raft, sturdy enough for six of us. Pushing off from the bank and out into the current was a magical feeling. 

When I think back on the trip, unwinding and slowing down was the most satisfying part of the experience. Slow adventure has a lot going for it and I’m a definite convert. Building something solid and beautiful and useful with your own hands, drifting through a landscape with time to talk properly with your friends, cooking on an open fire, swimming in rivers, and eating pancakes and sausages on a raft. Yep, I was pretty much in heaven out there.”

Sounds pretty much like heaven to us too!

OAG