Last year, wanting to make some time for my son and get him out in the wilderness a bit, I contact Wayne Jones of Forest knights (well known on the forum) to see whether his canoeing trip in Finland would be suitable.
After a bit of too’ing and fro’ing, the details were finalised & a couple of friends decided to join me and my 6 year old son.
I won't go into packing details, but I did my best to keep it minimal.
First off, we flew with Norwegian from Gatwick, meeting Wayne and the gang at the airport before flying out. The experience of check in was almost pleasurable with less than 10 minutes between the electronic check in desks and dropping our bags off at oversize baggage – rucksacks it turns out, of any size, have to be dropped off at oversize and best of all, no queue.
Arriving in Finland, we took possession of two hire cars and travelled north north east. We stopped at a service station for dinner (a much different proposition to UK based service stations) to & through Antolla to some cabins in the woods to spend the nights. The trip took about 3-3.5 hours.
Tina, renter of canoes and owner of the cabins showed us round, first was the traditional & beautiful old Finnish cabin and the 2nd, the modern cabin with slightly more room for many of us to bed down in. The modern cabin had recently had electrics installed and a water filter – both of which Tina appears to consider pure luxury. They’re a hardy bunch those Finns. What is amazing is that almost half the house is given over to Sauna. On arrival the Sauna was on and hot and it was lightly raining. For some, the outside WC was a new experience, being the first of the weeks composting toilets. A good sauna and a dip in the spectacular lake was our introduction to our forthcoming week.
The following morning we packed up and headed out. If there’s any advice I can offer is to take plenty of dry bags. The more the merrier. I ended up leaving my rucksack in the car along with a change of clothes. Everything else came with us in dry sacks. Tina does provide barrels which are needed for the massive amount of food which went with us.
We carried our canoes down to the docks from the back of a trailer, loaded up the gear and set out.
Saimaa is vast – lots of patches of open water, thousands of islands – most of them I assume are privately owned, but a few are run as public campsites, free of charge and contain at least a fire area, axe, saw, small wood store, composting loo and bins. As this was the May expedition, we rarely came across anyone else, but this also meant that in some places the wood store was running a little low. Pitching a tent can be challenging, but hammocks are dead simple and we didn’t lack for hang space.
The first island we stopped at was also to be our final island on the return trip. It was quite exposed with minimal shelter and probably the most basic. It also was the only one which has a little uphill walk to the camping and fire spots. We didn’t stay for the night, this only being about an hour away from the setoff point and we pushed on to “sauna island”.
Sauna island’s unique selling point is, unsurprisingly, a sauna. The site has a very large wood store, lots of camping and hammocking spots, a couple of loos and gets very popular in the summer. Usually the expedition stops there just for the night and pushes on to a couple of other sites. The trip there was wonderful – the water was flat as a pancake and the canoes glided through the water almost silently. The ominus black cloud drifting over however belied this and I stopped paddling, a mere 15-20 minutes from our end point to get both my son and I into ponchos. Just as we pulled them on, the heavens opened and I was glad for dry bags and my poncho. In the distance, the group was also scrambling for waterproofs and on arrival at the Jetty, one of my friends made what can only be classed as “a critical boating error”. The error is quite simple, if your boat moves away from what you are gripping, let go of either the boat or what you are gripping and ensure you are on whatever surface the majority of your body is. Make this decision very quickly.
After becoming the first person to fall in on an expedition in 10 years of running these events, we pitched camp. Wet gear got dry in the sauna and Joel got the first meal of the week on. The food was hearty and excellent and it was fairly clear we were not going to starve in any way.
I’ll confess at this point, I must have looked completely exhausted, I probably complained a bit as well as the reality hit home – I was going to not only be doing the majority of the canoeing (turns our 6 year olds don’t enjoy the paddling, just stopping the canoe by sticking their paddle straight down) pitch and strike both hammocks, as well as hassle him in and out of bed each day. I couldn’t have done this sort of expedition with his age if I was cooking as well – it just wouldn’t have been possible. Wayne proved that the trip was fairly flexible – after all, you’re not booked into sites, you can meander around as much as you like. So we stayed pitched on sauna island for a few days. The next day we went off for a paddle to one of the islands which had a fairly substantial hill on it. As part of the trip we portaged over sauna island (for those who don’t know, portaging is carrying your canoe over ground to cut out a substantial paddle or untraversable section of river). On arrival, we had lunch and a long walk up, round and over this hill. The circular route brought us up and out onto stunning vistas and gave my son plenty of time to tell me all about the virtues of Minecraft in explicit detail.
After a bit of too’ing and fro’ing, the details were finalised & a couple of friends decided to join me and my 6 year old son.
I won't go into packing details, but I did my best to keep it minimal.
First off, we flew with Norwegian from Gatwick, meeting Wayne and the gang at the airport before flying out. The experience of check in was almost pleasurable with less than 10 minutes between the electronic check in desks and dropping our bags off at oversize baggage – rucksacks it turns out, of any size, have to be dropped off at oversize and best of all, no queue.
Arriving in Finland, we took possession of two hire cars and travelled north north east. We stopped at a service station for dinner (a much different proposition to UK based service stations) to & through Antolla to some cabins in the woods to spend the nights. The trip took about 3-3.5 hours.
Tina, renter of canoes and owner of the cabins showed us round, first was the traditional & beautiful old Finnish cabin and the 2nd, the modern cabin with slightly more room for many of us to bed down in. The modern cabin had recently had electrics installed and a water filter – both of which Tina appears to consider pure luxury. They’re a hardy bunch those Finns. What is amazing is that almost half the house is given over to Sauna. On arrival the Sauna was on and hot and it was lightly raining. For some, the outside WC was a new experience, being the first of the weeks composting toilets. A good sauna and a dip in the spectacular lake was our introduction to our forthcoming week.
The following morning we packed up and headed out. If there’s any advice I can offer is to take plenty of dry bags. The more the merrier. I ended up leaving my rucksack in the car along with a change of clothes. Everything else came with us in dry sacks. Tina does provide barrels which are needed for the massive amount of food which went with us.
We carried our canoes down to the docks from the back of a trailer, loaded up the gear and set out.
Saimaa is vast – lots of patches of open water, thousands of islands – most of them I assume are privately owned, but a few are run as public campsites, free of charge and contain at least a fire area, axe, saw, small wood store, composting loo and bins. As this was the May expedition, we rarely came across anyone else, but this also meant that in some places the wood store was running a little low. Pitching a tent can be challenging, but hammocks are dead simple and we didn’t lack for hang space.
The first island we stopped at was also to be our final island on the return trip. It was quite exposed with minimal shelter and probably the most basic. It also was the only one which has a little uphill walk to the camping and fire spots. We didn’t stay for the night, this only being about an hour away from the setoff point and we pushed on to “sauna island”.
Sauna island’s unique selling point is, unsurprisingly, a sauna. The site has a very large wood store, lots of camping and hammocking spots, a couple of loos and gets very popular in the summer. Usually the expedition stops there just for the night and pushes on to a couple of other sites. The trip there was wonderful – the water was flat as a pancake and the canoes glided through the water almost silently. The ominus black cloud drifting over however belied this and I stopped paddling, a mere 15-20 minutes from our end point to get both my son and I into ponchos. Just as we pulled them on, the heavens opened and I was glad for dry bags and my poncho. In the distance, the group was also scrambling for waterproofs and on arrival at the Jetty, one of my friends made what can only be classed as “a critical boating error”. The error is quite simple, if your boat moves away from what you are gripping, let go of either the boat or what you are gripping and ensure you are on whatever surface the majority of your body is. Make this decision very quickly.
After becoming the first person to fall in on an expedition in 10 years of running these events, we pitched camp. Wet gear got dry in the sauna and Joel got the first meal of the week on. The food was hearty and excellent and it was fairly clear we were not going to starve in any way.
I’ll confess at this point, I must have looked completely exhausted, I probably complained a bit as well as the reality hit home – I was going to not only be doing the majority of the canoeing (turns our 6 year olds don’t enjoy the paddling, just stopping the canoe by sticking their paddle straight down) pitch and strike both hammocks, as well as hassle him in and out of bed each day. I couldn’t have done this sort of expedition with his age if I was cooking as well – it just wouldn’t have been possible. Wayne proved that the trip was fairly flexible – after all, you’re not booked into sites, you can meander around as much as you like. So we stayed pitched on sauna island for a few days. The next day we went off for a paddle to one of the islands which had a fairly substantial hill on it. As part of the trip we portaged over sauna island (for those who don’t know, portaging is carrying your canoe over ground to cut out a substantial paddle or untraversable section of river). On arrival, we had lunch and a long walk up, round and over this hill. The circular route brought us up and out onto stunning vistas and gave my son plenty of time to tell me all about the virtues of Minecraft in explicit detail.
