Another chilled day so far today, but going to the summer cabin again in about half an hour so won't have internet again for a few days, but I will hopefully will get back onto the internet before I leave for England.
I thought I would give you a desktop wallpaper for you guys to download. It's a detail shot of a small pebble beach we found in Norway. The wallpaper is 1280x800 which will fit most small widescreen laptops but feel free to email me if you want a larger size! Click the image below to view the full screen wallpaper then just save it to your computer and set as your desktop background.
Thursday 4th June. 08.15pm.
The last few days have been very chilled, stayed around Oulu and visited a variety of museums, the Oulu Art Museum was especially good. Yesterday we went to the same Finnish pub a few of us went to two weeks ago where they had an open mic night, this time I sang a few songs with guitar which was good fun, free beer can't be bad! After that I went to a Finnish nightclub, which was fairly similar to 'Oceana' back in Nottingham. Had a fun night there, it turned out quite a big Finnish rapper was there so watched some of his set which was also cool. Going to back to the summer cabin I visited on the first day I arrived here tomorrow for a few days which should be really nice, this time with a few more people.
Monday 1st June. 09.23pm.
Since we've been back from the hike i've mostly just been resting, today we went into Oulu center and had a look round a few shops and market stalls followed by going to the gym. Been hooked on the TV program Lost (thanks Josh) so when i've had a free momment i've been watching that instead of going through photos, but at some point I will spend a long time going through everything. I also have plans for a new website on it's way. Today I found I won another photography competition but didn't win the overall prize, but it's still great to get recognition for something I love to do. Below is a photo Juha took of me whilst on the second day of the hike. Yes, I am sitting on the edge of the cliff. The photo was taken before i realised it was an overhanging edge, afterwhich I crawled back onto the top.
Sunday 31st May. 12.48pm.
Haven't posted anything for a while, been on a fairly long hike the last few days since Thursday. Lots of really nice scenery and it was great being outdoors. The hike was along the Karhunkierros Trail which means the Bear Trail. The video below was on the first day of the hike. That was very far down i had to lie down to video it incase the wind blew me off! I will post some more photos in the next few posts I think.
Monday 25th May. 10.20pm.
We're back in Finland now after having the most amazing time in Norway and Sweden on the way back. We'll be resting for a few days and catching up on sleep so the next few days my posts will mainly be containg photos etc from the last few days. I'll start with a video from Nordkapp. It's hard to show how far down it is to the bottom. Check out these two videos here and here.
Sunday 24th May. 11.48am.
Norway is an amazing place, I've been spoilt for choice at locations for taking photos, and the landscapes are far to beautiful for me to photograph as I can't seem to capture the beauty that i've seen with my eyes. Today has been filled with more traveling. Firstly we took a very brief swim in the Arctic Ocean, which was exactly as cold as it sounds, (I have photo evidence!). We've traveled to Lofoten, which is located at the far north west side of Norway. I'm lost for words of how to describe it to be honest. Still getting used to driving a left hand drive car too! The amazing sights we saw as we started such as the snow topped mountains and reindeer now seem to so normal.
Here are a few shots from today and believe me there are plenty more to come! But I don't want to post too many photos here so these two will do. Also, as i'm posting in bulk make sure you check the posts below to make sure you haven't missed anything! And apologies for the watermarks below, there are too many pirates around! :D
Saturday 23rd May. 03.40am.
There are a lot of updates from friday and so far today, it's been a long, but amazing day. We got up early to get some food from the supermarket and set off eventually at around 11am. Our destination was 'North' to start with, then decided heading for Norway would be the best option. It was a very long drive accomponied by a lot of Bon Jovi and Finnish radio. We drove up mainly through Finland but a bit in Sweden as well, though the roads aren't as nice there! We made it into Norway after filling up with petrol quite a few times and one brief stop looking across the river that seperates Finnish and Swedish border. By now, it was about 9pm and the scenery was just getting better and better, it was hard to not stop the car around every single corner but the sunset colours were always getting nicer. After seeing two large otters play fight together (I was about 1 meter away from them before they noticed and dashed off into the sea) we kept on heading north until at 2am we reached the most Northern point in Europe, which was pretty cool.
Another panorama here, this was of a small lake on the way down from Nordkapp. Click below to view it bigger. I will post some more updates and photos from Norway in the following few days.
Thursday 21st May. 04.36pm.
Tuesday night we drove back to Oulu and spent the evening there. The next day we chilled most the afternoon, played football a little bit and watched some Lost. We then cycled around a fair amount of Oulu town, stopping at a few places then had a drink in the centre. Had dinner at one of Juha's friends flats with her sister too, had a really nice meal there and walked to a pub where they played live music, it was fun listening to Finnish people sing popular songs. Today it's a holiday in Oulu so everything is closed but a large outdoor fair opened today full of outdoor clothing, tents, hunting gear etc so we cycled there and had a look round and cycled back. Typically the heavens opened for the first time just as we were cycling and stopped promptly as we arrived home but at least it's back to the same glorious weather i've been used to since i've been here. Tomorrow we are heading north into Lapland, possibly to Sweden or Norway, we haven't decided yet, either way I don't think we will have internet that much so updates might be coming in bulk every few days when I find an internet connection.
Tuesday 19th May. 08.49pm.
Pretty chilled day, not much to write about but I thought I would show a video of the waterfall we were at yesterday. The previous night Juha managed to drop his NDx400 filter in the lake so this morning he had to go in and get it (too dark to see it last night) Ofcourse I had to film it on my phone. Click here to watch it on Youtube. Below is the video of the waterfall.
Monday 18th May. 11.55pm.
Fairly late start to the day, I was in need of a long sleep. We stayed around the summer cabin today for the afternoon and took a few macro photos of nearby nature etc. At about 5pm we drove to some more rapids on route to Waterfall Hepoköngäs (photos below). Beautiful location for photographing.
Here are a couple of shots from the last two days. Click the picture to view bigger.
Monday 18th May. 00.40am.
Yesterday was probably the longest day of my life, being awake for 24 hours is one thing but being awake for 24 hours and 22 of them are daylight is very strange. After getting of the train I met up with Juha and we had a early morning look around Oulu before going back to his. After helping decorate 4 Finnish sandwich cakes we chilled for a while, by this time it was only 10.30am. Since then we've made our way to Vähä-vuotto lake to a summer cabin, but on the way stopped at some rapids for photos. Spent a while in the sauna letting my heart slowly boil then been around the lake in the boat and made a fire half way round the lake to warm up at midnight.
Before we went out in the boat I took a panoramic shot of some of the lake. Click the photo below to view larger.
Sunday 17th May. 03.32am.
I'm writing this whilst on a 6 hour train to Oulu eating my 'emergency pack of jelly beans' (Thank you Jenny). Things so far have been very smooth going, no hassle at the airport just one large queue at the gate but got there eventually. Spent a lot of the flight listening to some relaxing music with the sun setting on my face. After landing I found a bus which took about 30 mins to get to the centre of Tampere where the railway station was. I spent a little while chatting with a beautiful Finnish Journalist, who actually studied in London, about the local area and a few other things and then she went on her way leaving me with another hour and a half to wait. Made friends with a funny Finnish couple who were also into art and we ended up talking for a while. (meanwhile a drunk woman was telling me she wanted to take my camera and my phone and 'destroy them'). Mikko called the police on the drunk crazy woman and got moved out of the station. Said some more goodbyes and found the train. Time goes much quicker when you're chatting with people.
It's very early and yet it's already so bright with pretty colours in the sky, which is a weird feeling.
Hello.
This is an online travel diary for when i'm away in Scandinavia/Lapland. I will update here as much as possible with stuff i've been doing and where abouts I am. I'll add in photos when I can too. So far i've just been sorting our what to take, camera equipment is pretty heavy and i'm just hoping the weight limit on the plane will be okay!
For those of you know don't know, i'm flying to Finland on Saturday 16th May and going from there.
