Day 15 - tick blues and flight training

Well we kept the tick in a zip lock bag (thanks Nick for all those small zip-locks!) and took it first thing to the Apotek, which I had luckily seen in my travels the previous day & my German allowed me to recognise as a chemist. It was a pretty amazing place from the 1860s with all the brown glass ground neck bottles, wooden drawers of various herbs and chemicals and a lovely wooden cash register (no longer in use). The chemist explained that we'd got all of the tick out (phew), I was worried about breaking off its head, which apparently isn't that bad either, and that my tick was a 3 year old female, cool. She also told us what to look out for if it had given me either of the diseases and reassured me that the bacteria needs the tick to have lodged itself in you for a few days, phew, just have to watch out for flu-like symptoms and go to a hospital if they occur.....

Old style chemist

and from the outside

So after that reassurance we decided to check the weather and continue on back to Sweden. Well it was looking wild and woolly in Sweden so we thought we'd go to nearby Mariehamn on a larger island of the Aaland archipelago. We'd been told that Mariehamn was a party (and ferry) boat destination with duty free alcohol so we were expecting something a bit wilder than quiet Kumlinge, but to be honest with you it wasn't. It had a lot of downmarket looking bars, clothes shops and a large supermarket, a few sand beaches (d'oh no bathers again and the Scandinavians again failed to live up to their nudist reputation), we spent about 3h there and then moved on.

a church in Mariehamn

Total landing bill €25, fuel €2.44/L (quite expensive), place: cycle paths 9/10; town 2/10; beaches 6/10

Kumlinge 1: Mariehamn 0

The weather started looking a bit iffy around 5pm so after picking up some smoked salmon from the smokery on the fishing harbour we happened to come across (€18.90 / kg), we hurried back to the airfield and my flying lesson continued back to Kumlinge.

It's funny but I've been telling everyone else, but never told Julian it appears, that I had the intention to learn how to fly in our plane, so since he realised he's been telling me the theory and getting me to practise turning etc. I'm already pretty good at straight and level, as sometimes there is stuff on the ground that needs photographing out his window / maps that need folding / he needs a rest. Before this starts to scare you, the pilot in command (P1) is allowed to let anyone fly a plane under their supervision, which in practice means that the co-pilot (P2) of your Boeing / Airbus is often doing the landing of your plane, with their 250 hours of experience (50 of which on a flight simulator) – have you ever wondered why your Ryanair / Easyjet flight lands which such a bang on the runway???

Anyway I'm no where near taking off or landing yet :-)