Safe Return Doubtful

I’ve spent the last two days moving between National Parks, from Oulanka to Koli. Koli is also in the east of Finland, and also quite close to the Russian border. But more on Koli in the next post, as I’ve just got here.. 

I split the journey at two places which are the base for some hiking and skiing trails, firstly at the newly refurbished ski resort of Ruka where there was a good ten kilometre hike that took in a couple of peaks and a rocky ridge between them.

Then another, a couple of hours drive further south, just above the town of Ristijärvi. There’s a ski-pull from the town, only a hundred metres or so, and at the top, the community have a shelter, pit toilets, and a building for events. There were a few people around, and a gazebo up under which a Vietnamese guy was working on two computer terminals. I was unaware at first, but soon realised that this was the lingonberry harvest. Such fruit picking here in Finland is usually done by immigrants, as, similar to the UK, the work is tough and poorly paid, and it’s hard to find Finnish to do it. In this case a group of about 30 young Vietnamese guys who work as a team, and live in different places in the EU, but for much of the year travel working short contracts like this. This was the end of a week’s work and they were bringing their pickings to be weighed and sold, to the guy on the computer terminals. There was a double-carriages truck there due to leave at midnight, so it was soon busy. 

My van had been under the trees in Oulanka so that the battery charged by the sun had dropped to about 70%. Add to that that the sun is already much lower in the sky. Saturday was cloudy with rain for much of the day, so I was relying on the engine to charge it, and I have my settings slightly out, which results in the app, which controls the charge, thinking that the engine was off, ‘engine shutdown detected’. I can override this on the app, and did so. I just didn’t remember to switch it back when we stopped at Ristijärvi. 

On arrival we tested the hiking trails and were out for about an hour, and I was back and watching the Test Match with a cup of tea before I remembered that I hadn’t changed the app back to its recommended settings so the lithium battery was still charging off the van battery, which of course, was now quite flat. 

I went wandering and chatted to a few of the Vietnamese guys using a translate app as they didn’t have any English. They pointed me to a Finnish guy in a blue Ford Transit van who was operating the fork-lift truck. Sure enough, he had a battery with him, and jump leads, and came over and got me going. He had no English, so again we were using the translate app. He was living in his van also, so we got on well immediately. He tows a small trailer which contains his tools and a fork-lift truck, and travels mainly in Finland, but also other nearby EU countries working short contracts wherever he chooses. In his 50s, he had taken a redundancy from a steel manufacturer after a divorce, and decided on life on the road, and had been mobile now for three years. We shared a beer after he got my engine going, and left the battery to charge. It hadn’t been quick, as I first of all had to locate and access the Crafter battery, which is under the passenger seat floor. 

It was actually quite an entertaining evening, with the Test Match finishing late, exchanging the odd few words with the Vietnamese, and solving the van problem. 

This morning Roja and I intentionally got lost on the maze of forest tracks. There has been a mountain biking club here, sadly no longer, but a couple of the keen members put in a series of trails through the forest. They are quite overgrown, which is a pity, as it was clearly many hours of work. But we made the most of them, and gave the GPS a good work-out in a couple of fun hours. 

From there I drove south to Kajanni and went for a sauna. This had been recommended to me. It’s 5 euros and tremendous for those camping and not using sites. I met a couple of German guys who had done a huge distance in their VW T4 in the last couple of weeks, up through Norway to NordKapp, and south through Finland. Tonight they will drive to Helsinki and take the morning ferry tomorrow to Tallinn and be back at home in Germany tomorrow night, and back in work on Tuesday morning. 

The sauna is a good place to meet people, it is often very chatty. The Finnish are passionate about their saunas of course, and usually at a place like this, the Cultural and Sporting Centre, have two in the men’s changing and showering area, and two in the women’s, at 80 and 85 degrees Celsius. I’ve done a few now and am used to them. Initially I had to ration my visits to ten minutes or so each, but after three weeks here now can do twenty minutes. I got talking also to a Zambian guy who was with his young son and his friend, who were in the swimming pool. He had lived here, in Kajanni, for 24 years. He came with a travel group on a whistelstop tour, enjoyed it and returned himself to find work as an engineer, which he did, and soon met his wife also. 

From Kajanni I continued the journey to Koli National Park where we arrived just after 5:30 pm, in time for an hour’s exploration walk before settling in for the evening. This National Park is nearer to cities and busier than those further north, though currently there is hardly anyone here. Quite sensibly therefore, there is a restriction on where campervans and motorhomes can stay, either on campsites, or at the ski car park, which is where I am at.