Saturday 28 June

We are now in Sondankyla. Two days ago we sat in our nice warm cabin in Tankavaara, eating our breakfast, with bags packed, when it began to snow. Somehow staying an extra night seemed very attractive. We spent a pleasant day at the gold mining museum, which included a look at the history of gold mining throughout the world. What people will do to get it is just amazing. Now they even have underwater equipment to Hoover up the soil from the bottom of rivers and spend many hours scuba diving for it. We were also lured into the activity and spent an our with our hands in freezing water, panning. Surprisingly we got a few grains, which have been carefully transferred to small bottle of water and can be seen if you look closely. Tankavaara is also on the edge of a large nature reserve and had an interesting little museum about the region. That was where we discovered that we had been in Finland for 6 days without realising that there had been an hour's time change. It explained why everything seemed to close an hour early.

The extra day in Tankavaara meant that we did a long ride of 102 km yesterday. We were about to leave our hut with the cycles loaded when the snow began again. This time we just waited 15 minutes for it to stop and left to an icy wind but fortunately the road was good and reasonably flat, and the wind was behind us. Today we have a day off to catch up on washing, emails and anything else and to see something of the town. The weather is now supposed to warm up. The downside of that will be the mosquitoes and midges. We have so far been spared them most of the time. It's been so cold that the contents of our anti midge spray solidified.

From now onwards we turn East towards the Russian border and we are told that the road gets very hilly. Up to now we have we quite far from the border because of the wilderness and nature reserve. There have been a few dirt roads that we could have gone down but they all come to a dead end and then you have to cycle back again. So we gave them a miss.

Attempting to find gold

An alternative building material to wood. This house is made from empty bottles. Gold miners must have drunk a lot.

A walk in the nature reserve. 

Leaving our hut. It was still snowing.