Breaking the Circle

Wednesday 13th June:

What a brilliant day!

In addition to the desire to ride right around the Baltic Sea and take in all the sites and cultures on offer, another dream had been to ride north of the Arctic Circle and camp in 24 hour sunshine. Well, we achieved that today and we weren't disappointed.

We escaped the rather unattractive, but functional site near Oulu at around 10am. An unusually late start for us, but we'd woken later and both felt a bit groggy for some reason. It was another gloriously sunny and warm morning as we progressed up the E4 to Kemi. I was feeling pretty good, although Steve, who was riding ahead, looked as though the monotony of the never changing vistas was getting to him a little bit. He'd clearly dozed off a couple of times and set the Transalp on auto-pilot :-) Maybe he was thinking about his rapidly wearing rear......tyre!

Turning onto the 926 at Kemi, we decided to take a more scenic route towards Tervola alongside the Kemijoki river. That's better, bends, elevation changes and more open views! We turned north on the 929 and then tried to cut along an unclassified road to the east of the Miekojarvi lakes. Our first experience of Finnish dirt roads turned out to be a rather, how shall I say this, 'exciting' 20 km detour, when we arrived at the front door of someone's lakeside retreat, having fish-tailed our way through various sand traps and rutted gullys. Never saw the cul de sac sign :-).

A quick vid of the intrepid SGD:

 

Just north of Meltosjarvi on the 932, we arrived at the Arctic Circle. It was a really uplifting moment for me and was made even more memorable as we attempted to pull out of the lay by, but had to give way to a passing Elk.

A lunch stop at a tiny roadside grill in Pello was made interesting by our inability to decipher Finnish, the lady not understanding English and the lack of any pictures to point at. We guessed well though, based on the cheapest thing on the menu, and ended up with a couple of very tasty burgers.......you can go wrong with a burger you know, but these were good. Even the 'pump-pot' coffee was good!

Sweden! The 50 km run up to Pajala was great. Still heavily forested of course, but subtly different housing and 'cut' to the land than Finland. Then we arrived at this dream campsite in Pajala. I'd spotted this months ago on Google Earth and thought it looked ace. I wasn't wrong. Sat on an elevated bank beside a river, it really is idyllic.

Super friendly lady and gent at reception couldn't have been more helpful. It's still early season and there wasn't another tent to be seen, but the site is in great condition and the facilities are brilliant. They call them service buildings here and they have everything you could possibly need on a trip like ours. In addition to the usual we've virtually exclusive use of the kitchen, lounge, sauna and laundry facilities. I even washed me pants....the Ewok, of course, doesn't wear any.....he just relies on an excess of ginger hair......sorry :-D

It was cloudy and bright, so after settling in we walked the mile or so into town and shared a pizza and beer (ouch) and watched the Germans take the Dutch apart......not really interested, but kept us entertained for a while. Back to the site to sit in the sun till midnight. Ace.