Exploring the forests and
swimming in the lakes has been our goal for the past four days. The hiking tracks and wildlife in Finland are
very beautiful with 100’s of lakes dotted throughout the different areas.
One of our hiking days
took us to the Astuvansalmi rock
paintings. It was a 6km hike to the
paintings, once again we were hoping to see some interesting wildlife like
flying squirrels but we only managed to see some birds, more wild mushrooms and
wild berries. This site is one of the
biggest bedrock painting sites in the Nordic countries. The paintings are located on some steep
bedrock about 10 metres above the lake, it is estimated that the paintings are
between 4500 – 6000 years old. The
paintings are quite faint and are mostly of mystic figures, elks, human figures
and handprints. We are glad that we got
to see them as we imagine in the not to distant future it will be unlikely that
they’ll still be there.
Alongside this we did a
couple of other tracks in two different national parks not to far from our
home. On one of our hikes a thunder and
lightning storm came over, it was amazing listening to the thunder it was so
loud! Luckily there was plenty of time
to get back to our car and it didn’t start raining until we where home. Corban and Leo have loved being leaders and
following the markers and signs on the tracks.
Tomorrow we are getting
ready to move on again. We have been in
Scandinavia for slightly over four weeks and will begin the journey home on
Monday, although this is not the end of our holiday! Our route home takes us to St Petersburg,
Russia and then through Estonia, Latvia, Lithuanian and Germany. We have already brought tickets for the
Russian Ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre, booked a walking tour and have tickets
for the Hermitage Museum (largest museum in the world).
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