Day 7 – Rauma to Turkhu

Woke early and packed up anxious to be on the way. I had no idea what the day had in store for me but I knew that I really wanted to make the evening ferry home. Not to be a pessimist but anything can happen on a bike so wanted to leave myself with plenty of spare time.

Breakfast was served at 0730 but I snuck in early so was on the road in good time. I had intended to go look a bit at the old town (Rauma is 1 of 6 medieval cities in Finland) but after 5 minutes and thought better of it, I can Google for photos later :)

Looking at the map (which for some reason my guide is publishing at a much smaller scale) I could see that taking the route they suggest would easily be 180KM+ ride. I really wasn’t too sure that I wanted to do that sort of mileage especially as I had done 200KM yesterday and it would eat heavily into my emergency time. So I decided to cut out the “scenic” bit through the archipelago as previous such diversions have proved to be rather disappointing.

About the only major event of the morning was being caught in a thunderstorm which luckily moved on pretty rapidly and from which I dried out quickly. Today had been forecast to be dull and raining which would have been great but sadly it turned out hot and sunny again.

Susie once again provided fantastic base camp support and booked my ticket for tonight despite having hardly had any sleep the night before and having to wade through the website in Swedish, way to go girl!

My “short cut” I took at lunchtime was a disaster and I ended up cycling back the way I had come but on a different road. I was able to ask some passing cyclists who put me straight. I asked them where they were off too and they said the archipelago which I had cut out. It was very beautiful they said!

Sometime in the afternoon I didn’t notice but I dropped my map. Turned around and resigned myself to a long process of backtracking to find it when after 1KM I spotted some fellow cyclists. I stopped and asked if they had seen it and the chap proudly produced and said “this one?”. A random act of kindness, thank you sir!

I kept an eye out for the Mumins as I approached Turkhu but sadly there were none to see. I stopped at a supermarket and bought a punnet of strawberries. By now I was very tired and even the fact that I was cycling behind a rather curvy girl in a bikini there was just no power left in my legs.

Passed another accident which left me rather baffled. An old gentleman had fallen off his bike and had blood all over his face and knees from where he had hit the gravel. The sad thing was that it was right next to a bus stop where a teenage lad was sitting. He didn’t seem to give a damn which I found sad, I washed the guy with what little water I had left and helped him to his feet before departing giving the teenager a heavy scowl.

Rolled into Turkhu at 1630 with just under 3 hours to spare after 155KM. Picked up my tickets at the ferry terminal and found somewhere to get some food after giving myself a body wash and rinsing out my cycling top. I smell rank.

So that’s part 3 of around the Baltic finished.

1100KM in 7 days, no punctures or mechanical problems with the bike, No saddle sore and the only pain is my left achilles tendon which has never bothered me before. No rain, in fact hardly any cloudy weather has meant that I got through an entire bottle of factor 30 just on my arms, face and legs.

Can’t wait for next time as it will involve Estonia and maybe Russia (have to do some research about that!)