Back from Holiday Again (part 2)

We were halfway between two large towns. I use the word "large" in a comparative sense, of course... to the south of us, around 50 kms away was Kuopio famous for being a port on the lake waterway system and a location for ski-ing and to the north, about the same distance, was Iisalmi.

First trip was into Kuopio and first stop the observation tower located on a hill overlooking a large ski-jump.

Luckily, there is a lift that takes you up the tower to the obligatory cafe and observation areas, one inside and the other outside - but carrying a warning that the wind might be strong. And they were not kidding! 

About as tall as Portsmouth's Spinnaker Tower, on top of a hill and with nothing higher until you reach the Urals to the east and probably the Rockies to the West, I can confirm it was windy. Enough to blow you over. We went back to the inside viewing area, so you'll excuse the next couple of pictures being taken through the glass.

View from the tower, looking vaguely north. Our cottage is more or less on the horizon towards the left of the view

Looking over the town of Kuopio and the lakes

Next stop - let's investigate the possibility of a lake steamer trip. Out of luck as it is Monday and Monday is maintenance day... But that means a couple of boats are tied up, ready to be photographed. Bonus!

Hopefully we'll get a boat trip later in the week. Next, we head north to Iisalmi, where the only location of interest seems to be a brewery museum. That was worth a visit we thought...

Amongst the many exhibits in the brewery museum is this 1920s Ford model T based delivery truck

...and outside is this large brewing vat that has been adopted into some form of sculpture

So, now having gone south and north, logically the next trip took us east to a resort of Tahko. While a ski resort in summer doesn't sound too promising, we'd read that the ski lift operated during the summer to allow the opportunity to walk along the summit and enjoy the views. Well, despite earlier comments about heatwaves, it was absolutely pee'ing down with rain and cold. That just left a trip to the west.

Which took us to the highest waterfall in Finland, Korkeakoski, accessed via the small town of Maaninka. Another "blink and you'll miss it" town, but home to an interesting wooden Lutheran church.  There will be a couple more of these later in the trip.

We later discovered that the churches are built huge so that they could accommodate the entire population of the surrounding area on market days. With wood being the most common building material, fire is a continual risk and as a consequence, most churches have the bell tower built separately to avoid the risk of the bells falling.

The waterfall is the sort where the water tumbles over a steep rocky incline into a wide gorge, so the only option is to descend via a wooden staircase that has been provided for the old and doddery like us. It is about 300 steps top to bottom. And then back up again! Unfortunately, it is a hot spot for mosquitoes. An Finnish mozzies are vicious little beasts!

Ann puts her Girl Guide experience to good use

One of the things about being this far north is that it doesn't get dark at night. Although not strictly far enough north to be in the Land of the Midnight Sun, the darkest it gets is approaching dusk in the UK, as the next picture shows:

For those of us living at more southerly latitudes, it is hard to believe that this is about as dark as it gets. The sun has just dropped below the horizon and will reappear in about 2 hours

And, at last, the promised boat trip! Just a 90 minute trip from Kuopio on board "Koski" as seen earlier. When you consider how much of the country is actually water, it becomes obvious that using the water was the obvious way to travel.

Looking back over Kuopio as we head out across the lake.

Passing a private island with a nice house and summer house / sauna down by the lake.

With our week at the cottage now over, the next leg of our trip took us to Savonlinna in the south east of the country. Savonlinna was once the border between Russia and Sweden and so is home to a very large castle that now hosts an annual Opera Festival (which we missed) and is a nice touristy town. For us, it was a return visit. When we were living in Finland, we had read about a boat festival being held one weekend in Savonlinna and so thought we'd make a visit, completely forgetting to take account of the scale of the map. It's around 250 miles each way from Helsinki and in 1981, not only were there no motorways of any substance, there weren't many dual carriageways. We got there just in time to turn around and head back, so this time we put a little more planning into the trip.