The Åland Islands Adventure - Lumparland, a million ferries, easy cycling, crap photos, ok food, and lots of laughs

 

So Sportsfans, I'm writing this to you from Turku, Finland.  Yep, we're on our final run to Helsinki - just 250km to our destination (on the scenic route along the coast).  It's pouring rain outside, and we're inside all nice and cosy in an apartment after being fully drenched on our morning exploration this morning - but all thrown in the washing machine and hanging up to dry.  We are happy and contented after a great 4 days exploring somewhere Mike has been so curious about since he read about it some time ago - the Åland islands.  Let me backtrack and weave you through the adventure as we wove our way through the islands.

The Åland islands sit between Sweden and Finland - there are over 6700 islands that form the archipelago and have a population of 30,000 people - and even though they are officially part of Finland, they have their own autonomous government, and are sort of a country in their own right, but not, they are an autonomous nation.  They are quite famous here for being somewhere very special to visit, especially with a bike, and we came across many people, both cyclists and non-cyclists, who'd raved about it, and like I said Mike has always been curious about seeing them.  So the adventure was hatched and executed.

We left Stockholm the day after we left the Royal Tunas.  We were up at 5am to get ourselves to the ferry terminal by 7am to take one of those really really big ferries that had like a beauty spa, three kids playgrounds, a couple of restaurants and a giant duty free shop.  It was all a bit much, and because it was raining we couldn't hang outside, so we found a little corner for ourselves and a friend we'd made, an 83 year old violinist on her way to Åland for a folk music concert, got cosy and for 6 hours watched the most beautiful scenery pass us by.  It was FANTASTIC.  Stockholm has hundreds of islands too, and we passed a lot of them with their cute summer houses, it was so peaceful and gorgeous to just float by - the big down side though is the photos don't do it justice at all.  In fact, when we gathered our photos for this post we saw just how dull they were and didn't capture even a smidge of how beautiful our surroundings were, the feel of the peace and remoteness of the 4 days, and just the wonder of being somewhere so isolated, grounded, untouched by pretension, so simple and just there for us to be in.  So, I'll post some pics, but mostly they are there to remind us of our journey because they ain't gonna win any "OMG that's gorgeous" competitions.

The cars getting off the ferry we were waiting to get onto in Stockholm

The violinist - 83 years old and riding her bike!

The best pic I got from the ferry of some of the summer Stockholm cottages - with the grey overcast day it just didn't capture the beauty

It's a tough life on the road

We docked in Mariehamn, the biggest town of the main island, explored the one main street and ate the most DIVINE rhubarb and raspberry pie, checked out the local supermarket, then headed to our campsite - we were on the water again, and had one of the loveliest campsites we've had so far - we're back in "camp wherever you like" country, I love that.  

Me coming off the big ferry (left in the pink jacket)

Rhubarb and raspberry pie - oh my Oden, the crust was sooooo good

Our campsite - with a little morning guest the following morning!

So, we woke up the following morning, Saturday morning and hit the road to the next island, Lumparland!  Yes, LUMPARLAND!  There is an actual place called Lumparland.  And we were on our way to it for our second night.  It was only about 25km, so an easy ride, with not a lot of action along the way expect for a very quirky rest stop at a huge scary antique shop shared with a Thai buffet restaurant (all very strange to us, but now we understand it's the Åland way), and a really good food stop - a soft drink maker with their own cafe where we tried the local specialty, Ålandkeka, which is their version of pancakes, quite a thick stodgy cold pancakey custard thing served with really good strawberry jam and cream.  Mike LOVED it, I was a bit more reserved in my appreciation.

The very strange antique shop/Thai buffet combo (Mike got a Coke)

The soft drink factory and cafe

Ålandkeka...the jury's out

So we cycled on our merry way, past loads and loads of wild blueberries on the side of the road which tasted a bit sour, they need a bit longer...

And we got to our FABULOUS accommodation in Lumparland.  Mike booked us a cabin at the only campground on Lumparland, and it was so freaking cute - you had to bend down to go in, it cost us about $65, and the guy who runs it is Filipino Swedish, and he offered dinner, the only food on the island, so we had AMAZING philippine stir fries for dinner as we looked out to the Baltic and the greenery...it was like a special magical place.  There were wild blueberries and raspberries everywhere, the raspberries were so sweet and so good.  I think this place will be forever one of the highlights of our trip - simple, beautiful, quiet, and so peaceful.  I loved it.

Wild raspberries - small and sweet

Check out my Filipino dinner being prepared table side.

Dusk

The Banana Dog makes another appearance the following morning on our cabin deck! 

Mike's pretty happy about that.

After our delicious Banana Dog for brekkie, we headed a few km to catch our first ferry for the day where we met a few other cyclists - one a couple from Helsinki (one of them a violinist, coincidentally) who we kept running into over the next three days and we became friends over much hilarity) - and headed over to Degerby on the island of Fogle, where we found nowhere to eat, so had a picnic from the supermarket shelves.  We then rode up the island with another ferry, a quick one, then a bit more riding to another ferry at Overo, which is a town with 3 houses, and we waited a couple of hours at the dock for our ferry to come - the ride was much quicker than expected.  We then had a 2.5 hour ferry ride to our campsite at Kokar where we had delicious fish and chips right on the water and a great night's sleep (even though it poured rain).

Anticipating the first ferry for the day - very excited!

Our ferry to Degerby (everyone else was inside)

Picnic lunch view

The bridge crossing another island

Mike on the quick ferry

The town of Overo

Excited to be ready for the big ferry to get us to our campsite at Kokar

Waiting...

And more waiting...

And even more waiting...

After a 2.5hr ferry, here's our view as we dine - we got in around 7pm, which is late for us to get to a campsite, so we were a bit knackered.  So it was food, put up the tent, showers, then sleep.

We were up the next morning to get ourselves back to the ferry port for our last day of the islands - we had almost 30km of gorgeous undulating road and gravel (we took a detour to spice things up and left the main road to do the farming road, a bit longer, but lots of fun, and no cars) and 3 more ferries to get us to the mainland of Finland.

Waiting for our first ferry for the day

We arrived at Galtby after a couple of hours on the ferry, most of it laughing and telling stories with the cycling couple from Helsinki who we met up with again, and now we were in Finland!  We'd crossed the border from the Åland islands into Finland...our last cycling stage was now afoot. 

Finland.

On the little ferry for the day - Action Mike is present!

Gravel track break - it was so fun to get on the gravel, we even saw a reindeer farm!

We made it to our final port of the trip - Nagu - which I have to say was pretty splendiferous, a few cute little shops (the first real shops we'd seen since we left Mariehamn 3 days earlier), and some hip restaurants - Mike and I had a celebration lunch, you can see my Crawfishfingers  and Mike's burger below, followed by another rhubarb and raspberry pie (soooooo good, and so pretty), and of course our Helsinki friends rode in and stopped right next to us, so they joined us for a drink before we jumped on the dinkiest ferry of all time to get to our final destination, Turku.

Mike's bike strapped to the front of the ferry for our journey to Turku.

Breakfast in Turku this morning on our morning wander, and the fresh food market below.  We also visited the old town and saw the famous Turku Cathedral which was built in 1300, and then as we wandered it just poured rain, we got totally drenched, and are now back in our apartment drying ourselves out!

The Turku Library (for Liss)

The joys of travelling when it rains!

 

Mike's ingenious way to dry out our shoes.  It's working.

So there you have it.  The Åland islands, a place I didn't even know about before we came, and how fantastic to have experienced it.  Thanks Mikey.  

As for moving forward, we think we'll be in Helsinki in a week.  We can't believe it.  We're not sure yet what happens after that.  We'll keep you posted!