For trekking beginners like us, the Forststeig was the perfect setup: Taking everything you need, and getting the experience of having to rely on what you brought, but with the option of finding a bus stop and getting out with only a few kilometres to walk at about any place during the trip. I'm not sure whether I would have dared to do a trip with a similar description (only for experienced hikers, it said) without that option. We had done a few trips before, especially to try how well we both could handle walking several days in a row with a pack, and how we'd cope with a rather heavy pack, but we still were not sure about the combination, and doing a multi-day hike with all the food, and sleeping in a tent, and so on.

Accordingly, there was a lot of planning beforehand, and more thinking about what to bring and what to leave at home than usually. Lots of weighing of stuff was happening. (Interestingly, women's underpants are much more lightweight than men's, but that advantage is completely eaten up again if you plan to bring bras, which are surprisingly heavy.) We did weigh about everything, partly because it was interesting, partly because it helped to decide which shirt or sweater to pack, and also because we tried to keep track of the ever-growing load we'd have to carry. It was a very good thing that most of our equipment was already chosen to be lightweight and relatively small to pack; it's not as crucial on bike trips, but it does of course help. There was more food-planning, of course, too. Usually, when on a bike or canoe trip, we have a "kitchen pack" which includes spices, a few kitchen tools such as a can opener and a peeler as well as sharp knives, and then we pack some essentials such as rice, pasta, couscous, oil, vinegar, coffee, tea, butter, jam, and so on. Then we rely on being able to buy fresh ingredients along the way, or eat out if we fancy it and get the opportunity. There's always at least a full meal's worth of ingredients in the pack though. The powdered tomato sauce packets sold for pasta are a staple fallback for this; in case there's nothing to be had anywhere, we can always have rice or noodles with tomato sauce. (We've had situations where that fallback was necessary, and much appreciated.)

This time, fresh stuff was mostly out, because of its weight and bulk. We took some snack veggies onto the train trip with us, and had them along for the very first day of walking, when they got consumed according to plan. Afterwards, it was dried stuff, and no fresh things at all - which was weird and very unusual. I did get my fix of freshness at least partly by picking blackberries whenever they presented themselves and looked more or less ripe, and there were a few late raspberries as well, but it was certainly far below the usual rate of greenery and fruit consumption.
Also much different to my usual meal planning, where I prefer things that are lower in caloric value, we tried to pack densely for the trip - and that did include nutritional value in regard to weight and bulk. Nuts were our friends, and I've probably never eaten so many nuts in a week before this. There was some wild guesstimating as to the number of calories required for a day, and some maths, and then there was writing of green numbers with the kcal values on each package, which did help a lot for the planning. It all added up in the end to about the amount we were guesstimating, and made for an astonishingly large pile of food. So large that we doubted it would all fit into the backpacks - but with careful squishing, and packing everything in as tightly as possible, and relegating tent and sleeping mats to the outsides of the backpacks, we did manage to pack everything.

We ended up with about 14 and 18 kg of pack weight, without drinking water (which added another one and 1.5 to 2.5 kg to the packs, respectively). That was quite heavy, but still manageable. It felt like about 80% of it was food (not quite true)... and the nice thing about having such a lot of food in the pack is that it will get lighter every day.

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This pack contains... mostly food. Or so it felt!


So we went on the trip, and walked, and it was taxing, at times, but it was utterly wonderful, and we even had a lot of luck regarding the weather. There was one day when it was raining all day long, and that was by chance the one day that we spent evening and night in a hut. When we arrived there, someone was already there, the wood stove was on, it was nice and warm inside, and we could dry our wet things - heavenly!