walking

Holiday 2020 Day 1

Posted by gozamite on 5.7.2020
Posted in: adventure, autoilu, Russia, summertime, Travel, walking. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

This summer we are making our holiday trip with the car. Luckily last winter I bought a Station Wagon (Ford Focus) so we can even make the beds to the back side of the car. The bed will be a little bit too short for me but I was thinking it will be OK.

Ford Focus double bed

We started driving on tuesday 23rd of June to the north from Imatra. The first goal was one nice hill quite close… So I typed the address to google maps and we started driving. After about 50 km’s we stopped and I was looking around. It was a wrong place!! I had typed “Hukkavuoren…” when I should have been typing “Haukkavuoren…” Luckily the correct place was only about 20km’s away!

Walking to the hill

The first place we visited was “Haukkavuori” in Rautjärvi. It’s a hill 79 meters above the lake below so the views are amazing!

79 meters down

We continued to Punkaharju. This National Landscape is so beautiful that people of Finland have voted this road as the most beautiful road in Finland!

The most beautiful road.

We checked one possible sleeping place near Punkaharju but it wasn’t ok… and it was still quite early. We continued to Kerimäki.

Kerimäki church

This is the biggest wooden church in the world. We had seen it before so we continued to check few bunkers close to Kerimäki. There is so called “Salpalinja” that Finnish soldiers built during the WW II against the Russian attack. Luckily we never needed to use this defense line.
Finally quite far from Punkaharju and Kerimäki we found a place to stay for the night. It was only 1,5 km’s from the Russian border!

Near Russian border

First day’s route was like this:

Repovesi National Park

Posted by gozamite on 1.5.2020
Posted in: adventure, National Park, nature, Ruoka ja juomat, Terveys ja hyvinvointi, Travel, walking. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

This National Park is pretty close to Helsinki -only about 180 kilometers to Lapinsalmi parking area. This National park is mostly about lakes, hills and cliffs -the “official webpage” says like this: “Repovesi’s rugged forests are dotted with blue lakes and ponds. The park offers accessible adventures for everyone. Its hills and cliffs challenge keen hikers and climbers.” (Link)
Me and my wife visited here few days ago. We were lucky to have very nice and sunny weather and not too many people in the park!

  • Beautiful forest and path
  • Lakes with clear water
  • Almost blue sky
  • Not so easy path!
  • Katajavuori (juniper mountain) is about 40 meters above lake
  • Reflection
  • Finnish forest
  • Finnish lake
  • Lake with views
  • Almost all the time you’ll have a lake beside you
  • The fireplace with the dinnertable

We enjoyed our walk in the beautiful and peaceful forest! And of course we had some food with us and we made fire.

Corn and banana!
Ahh, sorry! It wasn’t banana -it was Bratwurst sausage!
And for the dessert we got some ice cream… Or actually hail! It wasn’t very warm weather.

The information about the possibility to walk around “the main route” wasn’t very clear! We saw 1 or 2 info board about the ferry not being in use in the winter time. But I was thinking “It’s not winter any more!”

Ketunlossi (Fox ferry)

This is self service manual ferry, you have to pull yourself to the other side by yourself. But it was NOT in use yet. So we had to walk back the same route we did so far… But it wasn’t so terrible because we got to see this another time:

  • Lapinsalmi
  • New bridge
  • Hanging bridge
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This bridge was opened in november 2019. There was old bridge but it was collapsed in the summer 2018. This new Lapinsalmi bridge is very beautiful!

Vyborg – Viipuri

Posted by gozamite on 28.12.2019
Posted in: Matkustus, nature, Reisen, Russia, Travel, walking. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Vyborg is a city that was part of Grand Duchy of Finland from 1812 to 1917 and part of independent Finland from 1917 to 1940 but was finally lost to Russia after World War II.
Russia made it now possible to apply e-visa for a short visit in St. Petersburg area so this is what I did.
Me and my wife took the border crossing in Svetogorsk and because it was first time for me in Finland-Russia border it took nearly 1,5 hours to get through all the papers and documents. But we knew it will be like this so we were at the border quite early. We took a short stop at Svetogorsk centrum.

Svetogorsk is a smelly city… They have old paper factories.

From this not-so-beautiful-city we took a one hour drive to Vyborg. There I made a short stop at the train station. There is still parts of the original train station left but that was destroyed in WWII. It was originally quite accurate copy (smaller size) of Helsinki railway station.

Vyborg railway station

But finally I stopped my car in the market square. And we were lucky it wasn’t raining so we could explore the city on foot.

Vyborg castle
  • Market Hall
  • Buildings on the other side of Market Square
  • Ruined buildings
  • Old Town Hall
  • Transfiguration Cathedral from the inside
  • Cat inside Transfiguration Cathedral
  • The only Lutheran church “Saints Peter and Paul church”
  • Round Tower
Vyborg

There are many buildings in very bad condition or totally ruined in Vyborg. But luckily some of the buildings they are renovating so there will be something to see in the future also.
The city is definitely much more nice to see in the summer but we thought it was beautiful also now in the beginning of december… On a very grey weather. After the city tour we took a walk also in the famous Monrepo Park.

  • Pavilion
  • Ludwigstein castle
  • Väinämöinen
  • View from the hill
STATE HISTORICAL-ARCHITECTURAL AND NATURAL MUSEUM-RESERVE MONREPO PARK

In tourist maps this area is sometimes called as a National Park. But mostly there are some buildings, Art, Statues and other “things” in this area so it’s not a “normal” national park. Half of the area is under construction so we could see only the other side of the park. This would be totally amazing place to visit on a beautiful summer day!
I hope I will come cack to this beautiful town again some day. And of course Saint Petersburg… E-Visa makes the visiting Russia so much easier now!

October ride

Posted by gozamite on 19.10.2019
Posted in: BMW motorrad, DJI Mavic, Drone, Moottoripyöräily, motorcycling, S1000XR, walking. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

It was almost 3 months that I didn’t ride with my XR! I didn’t even ride too much Enduro but at least few times… Now it was finally time to do some streetriding and because it was sunday I took also my wife with me! We checked our favorite places Fagervik and Mustio Castle.

First stop at Störsvik sandpit

The autumn colors are simply amazing at the moment so I took lot of pictures and I also had my drone with me.
In Fagervik we made the walk through the beautiful area up to the church.

Ironworks area of Fagrvik

Then we stopped in a small hill beside the road to take some pictures. I took the pictures with my drone. The place where we made our stop was about here.

Some dronepictures from Lähdelammentie

Then the last place to admire autumn colors was in Mustio. This beautiful garden aroung old buildings is simply amazing!

  • Mustio Castle area
  • Building in the garden
  • Bridge
  • @finrin
  • IronWorks area
  • Garden
  • Garden
  • Mustio Castle
Mustio Castle & Garden

This autumn has been very nice with all the colors in the nature!

Pampskatan video

Posted by gozamite on 23.9.2019
Posted in: actioncamera, HDR quality, Video, videocamera, walking. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

Pampskatan is the last end of Porkkala Peninsula. From the most southern point of Pampskatan it’s only about 36 kilometers to Estonia. From Helsinki it’s about 75km’s.
Here I’m testing my new camera DJI Osmo Action and I have to say that I like it! I made even few underwater parts to this video…

Pampskatan walk…

Panorama pictures

Posted by gozamite on 2.5.2019
Posted in: HDR quality, Matkustus, nature, summertime, walking. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

I got myself DJI Osmo Pocket and I can say that it is quite amazing device! I totally don’t know all the functions it has but here I’m testing how it takes Panorama-pictures. You can take 180 -degree panoramas and 3 x 3 panoramas with Osmo pocket and I’m choosing the 180-degree pictures:

Click the pic to see full resolution

Maybe I wasn’t thinking too much what I was shooting. But anyway this Hvitträsk museum area is very beautiful place and I haven’t seen too many panorama-pictures from there before (maybe I wasn’t even looking!) You can see the rest of the pictures here.

Tour around Finland Day 10

Posted by gozamite on 29.8.2018
Posted in: adventure, BMW motorrad, Kävely, Matkustus, Moottoripyöräily, motocaching, motorcycling, nature, S1000XR, Travel, Video, walking. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

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.
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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!
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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.
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The landscape was simply incredible! It was difficult to concentrate to climbing when you have these amazing views all around you!
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Can you see my bike?? It’s waiting there…
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After 2 hours and 10 minutes we were at the top! 1029 meters above sea level and 550 meters above the lake Kilpisjärvi!
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On our way down the weather was even better and more clear. We got some amazing pictures!
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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:

Kopparnäs -Klobbacka

Posted by gozamite on 11.3.2017
Posted in: adventure, Kävely, Matkustus, nature, Reisen, walking. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

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!
6223093380The weather was getting better and better and the views also were greater all the time!
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It took 3 hours to walk about 4 kilometers! The route was like this: