Ore backar

Children, birdwatchers and families enjoying their picnic are equally catered for at Ore backar. The path runs along the edge of a steep, winding esker. It makes you feel as if you were flying through the landscape.

The walk begins in a green copse with hazel, oak and elm. Whirring wood warblers and shimmering fern distance you from the surrounding world, but after some hundred metres you step back into the light and the rolling oak pastures that run along the shore where there are fallen tree giants to climb on or have your picnic at. Children and biologists have a field day in hollow oaks, along the lake shore or on dunes dotted with bees’ nests. If you can wait until the end of your walk, you could have your picnic at the observation tower situated at the far end of the promontory that takes you to the centre of Lake Hornborga and its birdlife. You might spot a black tern or white-tailed eagle. Cormorants are as good as guaranteed; they nest in the dead willows that were submerged when the water level in the lake was raised. On the other side is the Naturum information centre and Ytterberg, and behind them Mount Billingen.

Return via the path that runs along the ridge above the shore. You can switch between northern and southern Sweden with just a turn of the head. Coniferous woods and hare’s-tail cottongrass dominate west of the ridge. To the east, the southern landscape beckons with its undulating wildflower meadows and giant oaks.

At the very end of the esker, everything feels close: the sky, the lake and the foliage of the giant oaks. The shrill call of the terns that sounds across the wet meadows is mixed with the summer song of the blackcap in the lush vegetation. There are few places where you get as close to Lake Hornborga as here. And just across the ridge is the cottongrass marsh. The esker forms a boundary between the green hills and the dark coniferous forest to the west.