The nine days that I spent cycling with Karin in Finland were totally and utterly brilliant and amazing. I do believe, however, that because Finland isn't super exciting and not that many very interesting things happened, that in the movie this period will be yet another musical montage. With that in mind, I have decided to tell you about what happened primarily through the power of photos and captions. Sorry if it annoys you, but lets be honest, anything is better than those terrible video montages from Norway and Sweden. Also, I am aware that the movie now has three musical montages in quick succession, but thats something they will have to sort out in the edit.
We began by having a look around Turku. This is the cathedral. It is a small town but a nice one. It was the European Capital of Culture a few years ago so there are quite a few little nice touches and intersting sculptures, like a giant daisy, which I thought was brilliant
We headed to the coast and some of the islands to the west and north of Turku. On the first two nights we camped on islands. The weather was very nice, it was really lovely cycling.
Because Karin had bought a detailed map and we had plenty of time, we were able to cycle almost all of the time on small roads with very little traffic, through plenty of forest.
We saw quite a number of deer from a distance. But what Karin really wanted was to see a moose as she had never seen one before. We spent many hours looking for them through the trees, hoping to find them.
On the third night we found a wonderful place to camp next to the sea. Each night we were able to find a good camping place, always by water, usually a lake, and nobody about to disturb us.
During the trip I invented a super game called 'Pine-Cone Wars' - we each got ten pine cones and we had to throw them at each other while we cycled and score points for hitting various parts of the other persons body/bike. Unfortunately, Karin didn't want to play this magnificent game and so instead I played 'Pine-Cone Massacre' and just threw pine cones at her
"weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!"This was about as far as I got. The water wasn't very deep and I landed on the bottom only half wet, which was good because the water was freezing!
Another night camping by a lake, another succesful camp fire built by myself, and tonight my darling, we will not be eating cold food, tonight we shall eat luke-warm beans. The more observant among you will have noticed the prescence of Lidl in Finland from the bag, another positive point for the country
One morning we stopped to ask a couple to fill up our water bottles. The woman, Anja, asked us if we wanted to see a garden and museum in the little village so she took us up and showed us around. It was a small garden with pretty flowers and different things growing and the museum, which was also very small, had a few things which showed us what life was like in Finland. Anja also told us some stories, like the morning that some wolves came into the village. Generally it was just a really nice experience to meet her.
On one of our last mornings we were packing up our campsite when I saw a deer run just a few feet past me at tremendous speed. It had come down from the main road at the top of the hill and was obviously spooked by something, and it ran right down to the lake. I called Karin and she came to watch. The deer jumped in the lake and to our surprise swam all the way across to the other side, and it was no small lake. It was quite the swimmer.
The deer reaching the other side. Later on in the day we were stopped in a town and there was a statue of a moose next to where we were taking a break. I wanted to go to Lidl and buy cookies so I left Karin alone while I did this. When I came back, as we started to ride on, Karin said to me that she had been comparing the photos she took of the animal that we saw swim across the lake with the statue, and she had decided that actually it was a moose. She said it had a hump in its shoulders and everything. I was a little put out, could I really have mistaken a moose for a deer at such close quarters. It did make sense though, moose are surely much better swimmers than deer. I was happy for Karin because she really wanted to see a moose and now she had. Then in the evening, I checked the photos on her camera. "Karin!" I said "I'm sorry, but come on, it is obviously a deer!"
Another lake. We didn't camp by this one because there wasn't space and a lot of people stopped here to swim (by a lot I mean, you know, two) but we did also enjoy a swim here and I can assure you I paid no attention whatsoever to that 'no diving' sign
The final day cycling towards the port in Helsinki. It had been a most wonderful nine days. Neither of us wanted it to end. I decided to try and smuggle Karin into Russia in my panniers.
