Heya again. I’ve decided to try a different approach with my blog. Whilst the lengthy posts got me quite good feedback I feel like the time between them was quite long and after a certain amount of time, so much happened that the task of writing them seemed quite daunting. Now that I am alone on the road though, it leaves me with more time during the evenings to sit down and write something up. So I will try to do daily or at least a lot more regular but shorter posts. Now that we got this out the way, let’s dive into the adventure.
Today was exciting in many ways. The whole card drama has now been resolved and I no longer have to wait and or time me days around the arrival of letters and other annoyances. So today it was truly a new start. Even though I’ve been on the road alone two days before, this was the first time where I could just head out, free of places to be at a certain time. It was also exciting because from now there really only is one direction: north. Up to this point whilst already going north for most of the days, we also took a lot of detours and headed more west or east. From now on the main heading will be north. Something about that really gets me all hyped up. After all it’s this call of the North, this love and fascination for it that made me do this trip here in the first place. And now I’m following this call.
For today that meant 109km on through and through wonderful roads. The planning of the route was actually quite difficult as I was trying to avoid the big European road but also not have to take too much of a detour. The end result was amazing though. For the first half I had a bike line which made for super easy and relaxed pedalling. Afterwards I was on an extremely quiet road that kept bending and going up and down for what seemed forever. Very nice riding again, but sometimes I could feel my legs quite a bit. The near 30° Celsius didn’t help and me running low on water just topped it all off. All the more I was happy about my arrival in Iisalmi, getting myself a fresh cucumber, some ice cream and stuff for supper as well as breakfast. After a nice extensive break I went on to tackle the last few kilometers to the camp ground nearby. Thanks Google Maps for leading me astray and making this another half an hour. Still, I made it to the camp ground at around half past two and had plenty of time to set up camp, shower and enjoy the lakeside that looks like a river. A really lovely spot, be it bug infested.
A quick thank you to two really good friends for amazing phone calls that got me through a bit of a lonely feeling stretch of the day! Whilst this trip is the time of my life and it probably seems like one hell of a ride from the outside, it can be difficult from time to time. Personal growth and new experiences don’t alway come easy.
I will leave you with a couple of pictures from today and will update you again tomorrow. All the best!
- Route: Kuopio – Maaninka – Majakorpi – Iisalmi
- Distance covered: 108.92km
- Total Distance covered: 1324.9km
Leaving Kuopio 
My place for the night
Raphael's Travel Blog 