We spent the second week at Tomi’s parents’ house in Kangaslampi in Eastern Finland. Kangaslampi is another Finnish commune on the brink of extinction — the school was closed this summer. Its only hope is to cater to Summer tourism and visitors who have their Summer houses in the area. To this end the local grocery store Sale was transformed into a 24/7 store with human employees present from 9am. to 6pm., and operating on the self-check-out principle rest of the day. The store has been in the national news several times, since it is a unique concept in Finland; the main controversy being whether the store violates alcohol laws, since employees are not always present when the store is accessible, even if alcohol can only be purchased when there are human employees in attendance.
Soon after we got to Kangaslampi Tei got really sick, so she spent the next 1.5 weeks mostly watching the Olympic games on the TV while Tomi worked on his projects. We tried to squeeze in some easy hikes to the nearby nature attractions. The first one was to Metsähallitus nature reserve in Pisamaniemi, where we found a network of hiking trails that we did not know existed.
The next one took us to Sääksvuori gravel pit in in the commune of Syrjä, now also called Syrjä Lagoon. When the nearby railway, from Varkaus to Joensuu, was being built a lot of stone material was needed to construct the railway bed. That’s how this quarry, now filled with water, was created. Nowadays it is popular swimming, diving, and camping destination among local youth. We saw several campfire sites around the lagoon, but only one tent and a camping car from Switzerland by the lake.
The lagoon was easy to access from the end of the dirt road, about 10 kilometers from Kangaslampi. The trail around the lagoon was steep at places but fortunately not wet or muddy.
The next expedition planned ahead of time took us to the Orinoro Gorge in the village of Mustinmäki, a narrow gorge with vertical walls carved by glaciers during the last Ice Age. The gorge is a part of a 7-kilometer nature trail; it is about 200 meters long and the maximum depth is around 20 meters. Boulders on the bottom of the gorge make the terrain rough to walk, but duckboards at places make the access easier.
Our last adventure from Kangaslampi was the craziest one: Tynnörikallio Cave. We found it from the same outdoor adventure site as the two previous ones (Retkipaikka). The only information we had was a very vague description how to find there by the author of the story on that site, and the latitude/longitude coordinates of the cave. The fact that the forest was quite rough and rugged did not make it any easier to reach the cave. We started on the “tracks” supposedly left behind some sort of a forest or timber machine, but eventually the tracks disappeared. Using the coordinates as targets we finally found us on TOP of the cave! The rock containing the cave is shaped like a half arc — thus the name Tynnörikallio (“barrel rock”).
It wasn’t any easier to find our way back to the car. The little dot on the map seemed to travel to the opposite direction where we (thought we) were heading. Looking back at the Polar’s GPS trace, we pretty much walked straight to the cave even if it felt like we were going in circles.
The next day, when the parents-in-law were taking us to the railway station, they told us that bears are a common sight by the cave. We saw some droppings but thought they were moose’s.
Next part, Summer Suomi (Part III), wraps up our countryside round, before we returned to Helsinki.