2019-06-07 63 29

Location

In a swamp in the outskirts of Juuka, less than a kilometre away from main road 6.

Participants

Kripakko

Plans

I can cycle there and back easily. One-way distance from Joensuu is about 50 kilometres. Temperature might be an issue in the beginning, but it should cool down to a manageable level during the evening.

Expedition

I left for the geohash at about five o'clock in the evening. The weather was sunny and warm: I did not check the temperature, but it must have been at least 25 °C and fallen slowly to some 15–20 °C towards midnight. It was quite nice to cycle along the roads though extremely dull since the visible landscape was mostly forest and some swamp. This road is quite literally built in the middle of nowhere, with absolutely nothing interesting to see between Kontiolahti and Ahmovaara, a 40-kilometre distance. I got to do 30 kilometres (twice!) of that stretch.

Eventually, after about 50 kilometres and two geocache finds on the way, I reached the target intersection and started to close on the hashpoint. I left the bicycle at the roadside 400 metres from the point and continued on foot. I quickly noticed that I was walking into a swarm of about a million mosquitoes. (I did realise in advance that mosquitoes would thrive in this swamp area and be extremely abundant, but it was still annoying.) The forest was quite dense but soon turned into a wet swamp. Since it had not rained in at least a week, the swamp was not too wet, but still wet enough that my shoes slowly got wet when I stood in one place for a long time.

The hashpoint was in a surprisingly beautiful area, with few trees and some characteristic swamp flora, like dwarf birch (Betula nana), marsh tea (Rhododendron tomentosum) and haircap moss (Polytrichastrum formosum). I had a swarm of mosquitoes flying around me and attacking me all the time. I got dozens of bites in my legs, arms and head, and killing them did not help at all. Therefore, I took some pictures and left soon. I took another, slightly more accessible route back to the bicycle and began to cycle back towards the major road. The swarm of mosquitoes still followed me for half a kilometre until I could reach level road and accelerate away from them. I cycled back home with a few stops to take more pictures.

According to my GPS receiver, the total distance of the trip was 102.2 km, of which I walked about 1.0 km. I was at home at about half past eleven, in almost full daylight even though the sun had set an hour earlier. For about six weeks around the summer solstice, we do not even get any nautical twilight since the sun sets to only a few degrees below the horizon. This is one of the few really awesome things about Finnish summer, though for those who can only sleep in darkness, it is extremely irritating.

(Fun fact: at least a quarter of Finland's land area is some type of bog. The exact value is unclear and difficult to estimate.)