A beam of sunlight burst over the horizon and from across the sea, shone straight into the tent illuminating it in a warm orange glow. It was only 05:21 but I was glad to be woken up to witness it.
I gave up trying to get back to sleep shortly after and took a walk down to the water. There was no one around and all was quiet.
Perhaps another reason why I was awake early could be due to the state of my rapidly de-laminating therm-a-rest. There’s no going back from a bubble like this! It’s almost a built in pillow, but sadly not quite.
Neither of us was in a rush to get going. It was such a beautiful and tranquil start to the day, we took our time getting packed away.
We had decided to set ourselves the challenge of getting to the northern end of the main island of Åland. Our map has a bicycle ferry marked on, that could take us south afterwards, but we could find no information about it. I looked like it would be a cool place anyway, so we set off.
The trail took us towards Eckerö and away from our original plan of St. Petersburg, which considering the distance, seemed like a good idea.
There was a short ferry crossing from Töftö, then a bridge to Prästö, which linked to the main island.
On the way, we came across the remains of an old Fort. I though I was getting bitten on my back by an insect when we arrived. When Clare had a look, she discovered a sting sticking out of my back! Ouch!
The Fort, well, what was left of it, had some pretty cool stonework.
It looked like it had had a bit of ‘Inca Influence’, although the build quality was nowhere near as precise.
Lunchtime swimming was found at a small harbour. We went straight off the end of the jetty, then climbed back out using a rusty ladder.
Passed by an old castle later in the day...
And met some more classic car drivers!
We stopped in Godby to pick up supplies for the night as it looked like the only town big enough to have a supermarket (which it was), then cracked on north towards the end of the road. When we got to the village of Geta, we were pretty much spent. We never normally buy cans of drink, but in the temperatures, we’d been dreaming of an ice cold can of ginger beer. When we got to the village, there was a shop there. Yey! But it had closed an hour earlier! Boo! They at least had a couple of chairs out the front, in the shade, so we took a rest anyway.
Four more kilometres and we reached the end of the road, where a small sign declared that the ferry had left in the morning and would not run on Sunday (tomorrow). Oh well, we weren’t that bothered and would be €44 richer by not taking it. As we were looking at potential camping spots a strange/dangerous thing happened. A helicopter flew overhead, then cane down quite low. It seemed to be wobbling a lot near the end of the pier and looked like it might be out if control. It then suddenly changed tack and came directly for us. A German lady on the waters edge was suddenly soaked as the down draft lifted the water in a whirlwind of spray. She only just got out of the way in time. I was unpacking my bike bag, when the wind hit me and I was pinned to the spot by the bikes. Sand, dirt and sticks flew through the air and I felt blinded. At least my glasses protected be a bit. The rotors turned off at last as I looked down to find myself covered head to toe in dirt, stuck to my already sweaty body. An ambulance then turned up and a ‘casualty’ walked over. The German lady and I felt more like the casualties! I was very unimpressed. We left them to do what ever medical stuff was going on and around the corner, away from the commotion, found a calm bay and pier to jump off. It took several washes to get the dirt out of my ears, eyes and nose! Yuck!
Clean and cooled off, we returned to the ‘scene of the crime’ and re-instated ourselves back on our picnic bench, where we enjoyed a really nice, quiet dinner and evening without further drama.
We pitched the tent slightly close to the waters edge as it was the flattest spot. It was inside the high-tide mark, but we thought that we should be ok as the tides had hardly moved over recent days. We hoped.....
Total Ride: 63km
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