Here is a fun map of the two routes available through the Turku archipelago. We opted to ride the blue route which is quite a lot shorter. We were dealing with a short weekend and didn't want to over stretch our capabilities. As it turned out it was the perfect length route for the time we had, which was around 110 miles (177 km). We ended up taking a few liberties with the route(Olli planned out some nice sites for us), so we didn't follow this exact route, but its close enough.
I took the train to Turku from Vaasa, because its simply the easiest and fasted way to travel with a bike. About 10 minutes into the first train ride I realized that I had forgot something. Now this isn't the first time, and as a matter of fact I almost always forget something, but this time I forgot my wallet. I shouldn't have been surprised given the last mountain biking trip we took I forgot my casual pants and I ended needing to borrow some. Luckily Olli didn't forget his wallet and I was able to borrow some money.
I arrived in Turku around 5:00 p.m. which gave me about a 1.5 hour wait for Olli to arrive, so the first thing to do is break the rules (The basic gist of the sign is that the spot is not for bikes). Of course there was nowhere to sit near the bike so I ended up moving it near a bench where I TRIED to read a book, but the guy talking to himself worried me a little so I spent more time watching what he was doing than reading.
After Olli arrived we biked about 20 km to stay the night at Olli's friends place near Naantali. They were kind enough to feed us, warm up the sauna, and offer us the spare room. It didn't hurt that they had a couple of super cute dogs.
Luckily they had an extra roll out mattress so we didn't have to try and share the single bed.(I was already prepared to sleep in my sleeping bag on the floor, so this was a nice surprise) We woke up the next morning at around 6:00 a.m., and again we were treated with a nice meal and coffee. We were then able to rearrange our stuff in the bags and get on our way at about 7:00 a.m..
There weren't really any monuments to speak of until we came upon this old church and what appeared to be an old silo (although I'm not exactly sure it was a silo) in Rymättylä.
It was a nice short break checking out the old buildings, as you can tell by the excitement on Ollis face. One of the neat things about this route is that we would get to take several ferry rides jumping from island to island. The first one was quite short and went from Airismaa to Aasaluoto.
So after our ferry ride to Nauvo we stopped in at the local K supermarket and picked up a few things for lunch as well as a couple drinks for the evening. We rode out of town looking for a place to eat, and as it turned out the rain began just about the time we were searching for a lunch spot so we found a nice tree to sit under for a little while, as the heavier stuff passed us by. Olli seemed to have lost his excitement from the church though.
After lunch we took the small ferry from Nauvo island to Korppoo island where they have the ferries to Åland, and we had a bit of a coffee and map reading break. Again it was sort of mist raining so it was a good time for a break.
Well..... this is Finland so you have to ride in the rain at some point. So we got our rain jackets on and went to check out Vattkast island. It looked like there might be some good stuff here on the map, but as it turned out we just biked to someones summer cottage and had to turn around and come back.
On our way to our camp site we came across this self service shop in the middle of nowhere on our way to camp back on Nauvo...... I had high, high hopes that there would be candy in this shop.....
But no.....
Thanks to the cloud cover when we got to our camp the view was pretty grey, but it was still nice to find a place to make a fire and start cooking dinner.
They have these things called laavu here, which translates as lean-to, and they usually have a fire pit. If you are lucky the shelter will have precut firewood as well as tools to cut more, but ours was the most basic. We had to gather wood for the fire from the surrounding area, but luckily someone had left not long before we got there and we were able to get the fire going from the left over coals.
What sort of Finnish adventure doesn't include grilling sausages?
Laugh if you will, but there were the best noodles EVER. It's amazing what a warm meal will do for you on a dreary wet day.
The little can stove worked wonderfully, and boiled the noodles and water in no time. We used it again to make coffee and cook breakfast. I carried 160ml of ethanol, which was more than enough for our needs.
Somehow we got a belly full of food and the rain seemed to stop for a bit, so we took advantage and put up our tents. We hadn't really accounted for the fact that this area was basically a giant boulder, and any dirt was sitting on top of rock. Finding a place for the tent stakes turned out to be a lot harder than it originally seemed, but we got it done just in time for more rain to come along.
So we spent the rest of the evening enjoying our couple beers and a little bit of Jameson under the laavu while trying to keep the fire from going out due to the rain. With the rain it had become a little chilly, so I had a plan to put on my wool socks and a couple layers when I went to bed, but the Jameson had me feeling extra warm. Needless to say I woke up before the sun with freezing toes, and I had to find my socks in the dark. It rained most of the night, but we survived and got up with the sun. The sun flooding our campground was both amazing to see and very welcomed.
Breakfast..... Well it was warm anyway. Couscous, the food so nice they named it twice, is easy to carry and makes for a filling meal, but it isn't very exciting.
Wool socks. I wouldn't recommend leaving home without a pair. I don't care where you are going, if you are in Finland take the wool socks. Bus, train, friends house, or to the forest, they are always a savior.
After the morning I neglected to get many photos, but we stopped at the local Sale, and got a few liters of water to refill our bottles and got on our way again. At this ferry crossing I enjoyed a glorious bar of Fazer dark chocolate and watched as the clouds built back up.
After our ferry ride we found some nice bike path that was more like gravel single track that followed the road, which was fun until I started to feel myself running out of power. I also started talking about burgers somewhere around this time, and the hunger began. After consulting the map we were quite sure there must be food in Parainen, so we continued with the hope of burgers soon. Parainen didn't disappoint and we found the smallest Hesburger placed right on the canal. We were even given this high quality cardboard number so they could bring us the burgers and nuggets. I don't know if I was just hungry, or if this really was the best Hesburger I've ever had, but either way it was really, really good.
After fueling up we had about 25-30 km to get into Turku, where we had a couple trains to meet.
When you live in Vaasa you get used to the fact that sometimes the public transportation systems don't care as much about you. So I had to take a pendolino train home, which is great, except they don't allow bikes on them. Well lucky for me I was prepared with the old hockey bag which I've used to transport the bike by plane before. We reached the train station just as the rain started, so we took everything inside and packed up the bike right there in the waiting area next to the lockers.
It's a little blurry, but only because I was working so furiously.
And ready to head back to Vaasa where I had a nice warm shower and clean clothes waiting for me. On the train I could really smell myself, and I feel bad for the other passengers.
