Off to Finland, oh make that Estonia

Well all good things must come to an end, and with approaching fronts we decided it was time to get on our way to Helsinki.

weather....

And in the Finnish archipelago everything looks much nicer!

Helsinki is a most attractive city from the air...

Here the port with some of the archipelago in the background

All those nicely renovated and maintained classical buildings.

In Helsinki we had to accept that all good things come to an end sooner rather than later, after 3h on the ground we admitted our defeat after finding only one hotel room available in the whole city (for €215 a night), took our bikes apart and headed off to nearby Talinn, Estonia, after checking that accomodation was no problem there (and more like €40 a night).

Stockholm once more

Some airshow shenanigans: note our plane in the mid ground, with the boeing stearman with 2 wing walking ladies in the middle of the frame....  One of Haakan's rare WWI Klemm airplanes in the foreground

A few old warbirds go overhead

We had a fun day exploring Stockhold with Mats and Tina, who we met last year at Skaa and have kept in contact with, here on one of the islands  Thanks guys!

We met Haakan at the Eslov airshow, his Klemm planes are very rare so he brought one in for people to look at and it was parked next to our plane.  In the short time he was at the show, he was kind enought to invite us to his airfield near Stockholm and let us stay in his man cave.

Haakan has lived a varied life and has dozens of crazy stories to tell about his adventures.  In Lithuania in the early 90s he bought some broken down horses, dug a pit, shot the horses and waited for the wolves to come......

Airstrip, farm buildings and the conference centre one of his sons runs.  Yellow is traditionally the colour that the nobility (or the rich) painted their houses in Sweden.  Haakan's estate is historically significant, but I'm afraid I've forgotten the details.

One of the Klemms

At a friend of Haakan's former petrol station

Having a chat with Haakan standing still for a moment on the left, Niko on the right

Nearby Sigtuna's town hall.  Sigtuna is Sweden's first city, founded in 980AD but long surpassed by Stockholm

Jimmy is a local of Sigtuna and very kindly showed us around, including some of the church ruins.

Day 13 - Swedish bug horror stories

Today we rode into Stockholm, did a bit of a loop around town, went to the covered market in Ostermalm for some awesome cheese and smoked fish that we ate beside what we thought was a canal but turned out to have been the waterway separating 2 islands, so we found ourselves yet again cycling the same coast line.  We had a few difficulties as the cycle path ended up taking us through a museum's grounds and sort of disappearing, but otherwise it was a good ride.  At Mats & Tina's we had really good hamburgers and heard all about all the nasty diseases Swedish insects can carry and about the one poisonous snake they have over here, which all sounds a bit worrying!  Otherwise a great fun evening.

Day 12 - rain rain go away

Sweden is being hit by a series of lows, and with the inclement weather, we decided to take a day off and chat to Jarl & Esther.  Esther is a big black dog in search of a home in the Stockholm region, Jarl is great to chat to & one of the reasons we stayed in Stockholm so long.  In the afternoon we met Mats & Tina, and will be going to visit them for a bbq tomorrow.

Hmm, haven't kept up to date with the blog as I would like: I seem to have missed a day.....

Day 8: Stockholm

Today was the day to try a real bike ride. So we went to the local store to get some cash out to buy bus tickets. Long story short, we ended up riding all over the island and then when we got to the bus stop we discovered it was card payment..... And then the bus arrived before we'd managed to work out the system. Luckily the bus driver said just hop on, put the bikes in the back. We were ???? so he came around the back and showed us the special bike rails on the back of the massive bendy bus and watched us tie it on securely. As an aside, one thing that really amazed me was that everyone in Sweden and Denmark, bus and truck drivers included speaks excellent English. In fact the older generation (I'm talking 70-80 year olds) speaks better English than the 20 years olds.

Anyway we caught the bus to Brommaplan then decided to ride in from there. Brommaplan is where Stockholm's main airfield is located and is the equivalent of being outside the M25 or peripherique. So we started our ride in an industrial area and I thought to myself, what a stupid idea to ride this far into town.  We crossed several bridges with great vantage points on the city and were in the centre in 8kms.  Well with a little stop off at a beach to eat lunch and bemoan our lack of forethought in not bringing our bathers!  A lot of Sweden (so far) seems relatively new, even for us Aussies, but really very nice.  The lovely city hall was built in 1915. Apparently the church with cast iron steeple I was admiring is actually one of the oldest, but I think the steeple is new.  

City hall

The weather has been unusually warm (read heat wave) so we took it pretty easy and had a few naps under trees, ending up at the Nordisk Museet at 4pm.  We didn't realise that it closes at 5pm until 4.45.....  It was a fascinating ethnography museum with costumes, furniture and even re-built rooms from houses.  It was surprising to see how much the Swedish standard of life has increased post-WWII.

The ride back to Skaa was fine, lots of gear changing as we went up and down hills and under roads and beside tunnels wherever the bike path took us.

Random beached ship we saw in a canal on the way back to the airfield

Total kms 50

Day 7: Bornholm - Stockholm (Skaa Edeby)

So we sadly said goodbye to Bornholm today, and set off on the 3h journey up to Skaa Edeby (Stockholm).  I have to admit that I had a bit of a nap in the middle so excuse the lack of photos and detailed way description.  I was amazed by how much sparser the population in Sweden is & how many more forests we flew over.

Skaa Edeby airstrip

When we arrived we met a lot of people and were shown the best place to put up our tent: under the wing of an Antonov - an old Siberian air transport machine that apparently took 10 people, 10 goats, and several hundred kilo of potatoes.  It's a really massive plane and currently out of service with no intention of putting it back in, due to the amount of fuel it uses (radial 9 cylinder engine).  Its name is Boz so they're planning to make it into a pub, which sounds like an excellent idea to me!  At the time of writing (several days later) I've been using it in the traditional Siberian manner: using it to hang my washing out to dry.....

real camping under the wing

Not much to report as we just socialised.  Julian made tuna mornay on rice for dinner, which turned out surprisingly well, considering that we had no milk and the carton we borrowed from the fridge was actually mjolke, a kind of yoghurt....

Mjolke

The sunset was really lovely that night, but as always the camera was inferior to the human eye...