When the sun is setting, between dusk and darkness, there is a moment when the light turns blue. And the world stops for a heartbeat.
The drive home from a holiday, especially with forecasted rain, is rarely fun.
But when it is, it is a lot of fun.
A morning walk (with a breakfast that, according to Kiara, is worth moving to Haapsalu for), a submerged limestone quarry, an abandoned prison, and a real submarine – a few worthwhile stops. And Stuart drove faster than the wind, as the rainclouds never quite reached us.
And at the end is home.
For good and bad.
On the drive to Haapsalu, we drove past a gorgeous ruin – I forced Stuart to turn around (in traffic) and go back. If there are ghosts, they would definitely live here! But we didn’t meet any. And we looked.
The girls, on the other hand, found their sense of whimsy in a museum/craft and playhouse based on illustrations by Ilon Wikland. I, especially, loved all the joyful images from Astrid Lindgren’s books. They took me straight back to my childhood. With rain pouring down, there was no-one else.
The magic uninterrupted.
Whenever you ask the girls what they liked the best, their standard answer is “everything”. Same today. After some considerable pressure, they concluded their favorite was climbing the lighthouse. And the weirdest playground they had ever visited.
Hiiumaa has great lighthouses. We only visited three – all seven would have felt like overkill. Climbing the Köpu one, with its incredibly steep stairs and windy platform, was, indeed, more adventurous than it sounds.
Stuart’s favourite was the series of abandoned WW2 and Cold War coastal bunkers and military posts in the middle of the forest. The underground bunkers and remaining structures, including a watchtower, were free to explore. One needed a flashlight, good shoes and a real spirit of adventure. They were creepy! And not just for the girls…
And the playground… The random collection of wooden structures, all built by one (sligtly obsessed) man, was quirky and the scale was impressive. Clearly it had been amazing – at some point. However, now they teetered between unkempt-but-charming and unkempt-and-not-safe. The girls had a blast, though, exploring every structure we allowed them into.
My favourite part was all the photos. And the coolest bus stop ever.
We got an early start today due to a serious underestimation of how early one must book the ferry to Hiiumaa. Luckily, someone had come up with the idea of a few non-prebookable tickets.
But that gave us plenty of time to meander around the southern part of Hiiumaa. A short hike towards the southernmost tip, an old (sill functioning) wool factory, and a playground or two…
We decided to have a quiet evening and braai (BBQ) at the cottage – and luckily we did. The girls loved the place! The cottage looked like a pink Moomin house, with round walls, the main bedroom in a tower, massive cubby beds for the girls and an amazing floating sauna in the little pond. It even had a tiny playground.
The fact that it was totally impractical bothered only Stuart, who was cooking.
Ambling around Saaremaa gets you to some… interesting places.
Sörve Lighthouse and Peninsula were seriously majestic, albeit in a windy, rough and rustic way. But Sõrve Museum, with its three little “military, seafaring and natural history” buildings, was weird – in a good way. The themes were interpreted rather loosely, and included eg., material of Hitler and Occultism, and a wide selection of preserved bird feet.
And then there was the park with more than 300 stone sheep statues with strong political opinions. And the Viking playground. And the stone tree.
Kuressaare castle was cool, but quite ordinary castle… if you ignore the nun, the sceleton and the lions.
There is a beautiful narrow strait just next to our summer cottage. It used to be a protected fish migration route, so no building and no fishing were allowed. I think the regulations have changed somewhat, but parts of the shoreline remain untouched.
As kids – maybe 14-17 years old – my brother and I would occassionally take the boat there for a swim. The strait is so sheltered from the wind that the water was always several degrees warmer than anywhere else.
When something is close to home, you rarely see it as anything special.
Pulkkilanharju is a narrow esker gormed during the Ice Age. It is surrounded by the open waters of lake Päijänne, with small green islands dotting the landscape. It is often listed as one of the most scenic drives in Finland.
But because it is so close to the summer cottage, years can pass without us visiting.
This year, we decided not only to drive across it, but also to walk the short nature trail in the national park. The girls insisted the terrain was so challenging they couldn’t possibly have finished the walk without the 1,5l of bilberries they ate along the way. It really wasn’t. But the bilberries were clearly excellent.
We finished the adventure with lunch and ice cream at Vääksy Lock. Another piece of Finland’s must-see scenery.
The Football World Cup ended yesterday, with Spain beating Argentina – and with a clear difference in the quality of play if not in the score.
We followed the tournament more closely than we expected, considering it was held in North America. The time difference made many of the matches impractical to watch. Yet, we managed one almost daily.
After eight weeks invested in the Cup, we wanted to watch the final too. It kicked off at 10pm. When it went to extra time just after midnight, we started to get nervous. It ended at 1am.
The alarm went off at 4am.
The 5 am bus was the last one that took bicycles and still got us to Helsinki in time to pick up the girls from camp
The sunrise was beautiful, though.
The clouds were heavy today, but there was (almost) no rain. The occassional drizzle – so light that the wind dried us faster than the rain got us wet – doesn’t count.
A win in my books.
The route from Loviisa to Kotka was mostly on paved roads, rather than the forest tracks and gravel roads we usually look for. In fact, we occassionally end up in paths more suited to game tracks in our determination to avoid bigger roads. Only once have we been forced to backtrack for more than a kilometer or so.
We’ve been lost at least twice.
Still, there were several interesting stops: the Loviisa fortress ruins, Strömfors Iron Works, the Savukoski Museum Bridge and the Tsar’s Fishing Lodge. What supprised us the most was finding a quite large and lovingly nurtured English Garden in the middle of absolutely nowhere (Erja’s Garden).
Finally, a note to self: Sunday evening is not the right time to find great restaurants in Kotka.
A few days before the weekend, the forecast was still predicting massive rainfall – as much rain in two days as we normally get in the whole of July. With that in mind, partly cloudy Saturday felt like a win.
The cycle path from Porvoo to Loviisa meanderered through fields and forests. A few small villages and the occassional grand manor house dotted the route.
Stuart and I have developed a tradition of betting on which animal we see first on our cycling trips (cats, dogs and birds don’t count). I played it safe and put my money on a cow. Stuart guessed a horse. He won – although technically that was only the second one. The first animal we saw was a donkey. Maybe I should have known.
We did not see a single cow during the entire trip. Not one.
Loviisa is another lovely seaside town with a wooden old town and very popular harbor district with cafes and restaurants. Fortunately, the rain gave us a good excuse to call it a night early.
Blue Moment 