Yes! We’ve had so many nice sunny days so far and we really have been enjoying the spring.
And it’s been coming fast. In Hanko (The most southern town of Finland) there’s almost no snow anymore!
These pictures have been taken east from “Neljän tuulen tupa” cafeteria. There is area “Furuvik Nature preserve” (Furuvikin luonnonsuojelualue) where you can freely walk around and even take suntan but just don’t destroy anything from the nature.
Kopparö recreation area is located in Raasepori and you need to take a short ferry ride to enter the Sher Landet (Skärlandet) island.
After you park your car and start walking the trail is very wide in the beginning. But soon you will see small bay on the right side and the trail is getting smaller. Here you will go across the suspension bridge.
The structure of the bridge is quite scary. I will share a video in the end of this blog about it.
Right after this bridge we started to hear bird screaming with very high note. It was like “Kvik – Kvik – Kvik!” But the volume of the shouting was extremely loud. And only few minutes after this we saw them flying in the sky -Two White-tailed eagles!
This was a second time for me when I’m seeing this mighty bird. I guess these were two young ones because they were shouting all the time!
(Mama! Mama! Look at me! I’m flying!!)
Soon there was another bridge so we moved from Långön island to Stora Sandö island. This is like the “Main island” of the Nature path.
The trail goes almost around the island and because it was quite warm we chose to turn to the left. I knew there would be a place for swimming!
We didn’t have our swimming suits with us but it wasn’t a problem. We both did the the skin-dipping!
The walk between Sandöedet and Stora Sandö grilling places is the most beautiful part of the trail! You can walk almost all the time very near to the sea and admire the clear water of the Gulf of Finland!
We reached the grilling place of Stora Sandö and took another break there to eat our snack. I also made a Droneflight to take few pictures and the video of this beautiful area.
After our snack my wife started to collect blueberries. Soon the half-a-liter bottle that we had was full of berries and we got to eat fresh blueberry pie at home!
The whole trail is almost 8km walk and we did it all!
In the map it looks like this:
In the beginning of this blog I said about the suspension bridge that I was little bit worried. So I made a video about it. It’s only in Finnish.
Waking up beside the river in Lapland is quite nice. I took my drone up even it was max 50m.
Later the weather was not very nice in Finland either. But there was a chance that it wouldn’t rain so we decided to go up to Aavasaksa -after we crossed the Arctic circle…
Aavasaksa is one of the first “Tourist attractions” in Lapland. There was visitors from other countries already in 18th century. In 1881 they built “Emperor’s Hut” for possible Russian Emperor visit but it never happened!
Aavasaksa is 242 meters high “mountain” just beside border of Sweden and Torniojoki -river. On the top of the hill is also one of the Struve Geodetic Arc -points. We took a walk around 2,5km path on the top of the hill. We had to take our raincoats because it was raining a little bit.
We also checked little bit of the city of Tornio -I was very interested how they had arranged the check in points on the border? But it was just a border patrol car beside the road before Sweden.
There is an old church in Alatornio. This was built (1797) only 11 years before Sweden lost a war against Russia. And the church was built honoring the King of Sweden -I would say quite bad luck for him!
Then we drove all the way south of Oulu to the island of Hailuoto! Because weather forecast was quite nice for the evening and for next morning! Yes, the evening was nice but there was also quite strong wind!
Trying to make a dinner in this kind of wind was interesting. Ok the food was great but there was some sand and small stones as a spice!
Route for the Day 11 was like this:
I made reservation for this trip in August. I was thinking it would be nice to spend some time with my wife when we’ve been married about 1 year… And even in foreign countries! (In the summer we couldn’t go abroad because the residence permit wasn’t ready yet) -So the destination for this trip would be Nice (Nizza).
We took the plane from Helsinki to Nice very early on Sunday morning.
We landed to this mediterranean city about 10.30 am. Then we took the bus to the city center. It was still raining when we arrived (But rain stopped right after we started walking from the bus stop to the hotel).
This day we dedicated for getting to know the city. And there is one place particularly that gives you very good idea about what is this beautiful city all about: The Castle Hill (Colline du Château). There used to be also a castle but King Louis XIV asked it to be destroyed in 1706. In 19th century they started to design the park and fountain on the top of the hill. Also some parts of the olf castle has been renovated.
We walked up to the hill from the east side. This side is not so steep and there are a lot of trees so the park looks kind of wild from this side.
Restored parts of the old castle. This was maybe the inner yard or patio.
But when you finally reach the to of the hill the views are simply amazing!
View to the east. It’s the harbour of Nice.
And here’s the “famous view” to the beach boulevard of Nice. The mediterranean sea and the waves are very beautiful!
Ofcourse we took a walk also there…
We had small but very cozy hotel almost in the heart of the city (Vieille Ville). This area has very narrow alleys with many many restaurants and shops.
And our hotel room was in the 7th floor with the view to the Tête carrée (Cubic head in the modern art museum)
I was restlessly already waiting for the next day!
You can check the video my wife made about this first day:
Suddendly we had beautiful and warm weather. We chose afternoon walking in Porkkala and it was definitely a very good idea!
Autumn colors are now the best possible… and sun sets nice golden flare everywhere!
4 kilometers walk took almost 3 hours!
Take a look of all the pictures here!
We had an idea to do some hiking today. But first we needed to ride to the place where we wanted to hike… So we started quite early, we rode only about 190 kilometers to reach out destionation in Kilpisjärvi. On this ride we only made short stop at Enontekiö/ Hetta to fill the tank and in Muotkatakka which is the highest point of the road in Finland.
After midday we were already changing clothes and shoes and starting our Hike up to the Saana mountain. The motorcycle was parked behind Kilpisjärvi hotel, the elevation was about 500 meters there.
And we had about 4 kilometers walk up to the mountain where the maximum elevation is 1029 meters. So at the same time when we were walking 4 kilometers to the top we also had to climb about 530 meters up!
After first kilometer the trees are gone. This was the easiest part. The path was very rocky and we had to use also hands few times when the hill was very steep.
The landscape was simply incredible! It was difficult to concentrate to climbing when you have these amazing views all around you!
Can you see my bike?? It’s waiting there…
After 2 hours and 10 minutes we were at the top! 1029 meters above sea level and 550 meters above the lake Kilpisjärvi!
On our way down the weather was even better and more clear. We got some amazing pictures!
We had a nice apartment with sauna to spend the night. This was maybe the most amazing day of our holiday trip!
My wife made a video about this day:
The route of the day was like this:
I’ve visited Kopparnäs many times, it’s one of my favorites places to grill sausages! This time I decided to make a visit to the area that is on the south-east side of Kopparnäs -it’s called Klobbacka.
It’s almost like an island but you can walk there throught a narrow neck of land. I actually made a shortcut by walking through the ice. The weather was very nice and on the other side of Klobbacka there was a lot of beautiful places to take pictures!
The weather was getting better and better and the views also were greater all the time!
It took 3 hours to walk about 4 kilometers! The route was like this:
Vietin ihanan rauhallisen kävelypäivän Porkkalanniemessä. Kävelyä muutama kilometri hankalassa kalliomaastossa ja sitten herkuttelua grillipaikalla. Tuli kuvattua pari videota jotka lyhyydestään huolimatta kertoo mainiosti sen miten hieno päivä oli!
ja toinen:
6300 askelta (n. 4,4km) josta parituhatta metsässä.
Go - Za 