Rovaniemi; Monday, 23 July, 2007

Sadly sleep no did not appear to want to visit me. Despite having decent thick curtains I couldn’t drop off, so after another day-night (what do you describe the night-time when there is no darkness) I was fearing I would be knackered. Instead after a large and filling breakfast I suddenly felt really full of energy. I would suspect this is the start of the manic streak that most people in the arctic regions develop during the summer, obviously it only needs 96 hours without darkness to send you a little loopy.

So I decided to use up my energy by hiring a bike and seeing the area around Rovaniemi by pedal power.

After hiring a bike from the next door arctic safaris I headed out along the banks of the river following it out of the centre of town, round the side of a big lake, and finally, back in towards town. I then decided it would be time for a challenge, time to be able to say something impressive, like “I’ve cycled all the way to the arctic circle and back”, I just wouldn’t quantify that the starting point was Rovaniemi, 8Km south, not London some 2,500Km South!

I have to admit that I did sort of fail in my attempt, the last 400m were up quite a steep hill so I gave up and pushed the bike up the hill for the last part! After locking up the bike I wandered into the world of tack that is Santa Land. If anything it was even more tacky that it had been last summer, except this time I wasn’t in full control of my mental state, so I let the tack get to me and went bad souvenir shopping. Most of my friends would end up having a highly touristy hat forced upon them!

Having purchased the whole of the EU silly hat mountain I had a bit of a further wander around the site, stopping for a very nice late lunch of a salmon steak cooked in a traditional Lappish fire pit. Then I saw a sign pointing across the road to a nature walk to “Santa’s forest” so I decided to have a look.

The walk is about 1.4KM to the forest, and then you have to walk the same route back. It goes through several different examples of Lappish habitat, including bog, marsh and dry pine forest. On starting the walk you do have to walk past a large sign warning that you are “Kulku Omalla Vastuulla – Walking at your own risk”. My slightly warped mind imagined Santa’s killer ninja reindeer lead by Rudolph the black belt reindeer, but that was probably just the lack of sleep.

The walk is quite interesting with signs every now and again telling you about the habitats and flora, the walk ends at the entrance to Santa’s forest, which appears to be a pine tree plantation, which was closed to all visitors! I walked back to Santa land, picked up the bike and cycled all the way back from the Arctic Circle… the 8Km to Rovaniemi, returned the bike and had a wander around the town centre for a while, before going over to Arcticum, the Rovaniemi museum of the Arctic. When I had been last year one of the main exhibition areas had been closed for the construction of a new permanent exhibition on the Arctic and the environment, and I was interested to see what this would be like, so I headed back.

The new exhibition is very good, and includes a Northern Lights show and information on how changes in weather patterns and the ice sheets are slowly destroying not just the habitats, but also the way of life of the indegiouns people of the arctic regions.

After looking round the museum I wandred back to the hotel, picked up my bag and walked down to the station to get the sleeper down to Helsinki. This was one of the parts of the trip that I had splashed out on. I could have travelled in a normal seat on the train all the way down to Helsinki, for about €75, but the thought of spending 11 hours staring out the window didn’t appeal so I decided to go for a sleeper. I could have saved some money here and gone for a shared cabin, but I have issues regarding sharing my sleeping space with strangers. I could have had a single cabin to myself in a standard sleeping car. Instead, though I decided to go for the premium package.

Finnish railways have recently introduced new double deck slepping cars. All the cabins on the top deck come with ensuite shower and toilet and a full size single bed. This compares favourably to my experience of British sleepers with their bed just wide enough to lie down on without hanging off the edge, one toilet between twelve and access to showers only at the London terminals! Unfortunatly, I discovered the hard way that if you really build something up in your mind, you are likely to be sorely disappointed. The bunk was very comfortable, the toilet and shower unit very ingeniously fitted into the cabin, it’s just a shame that someone forgot to fill the water tanks of the carriage up before it left Rovaniemi. The first time I flushed the loo, it came up with an out of service sign, no water came out when I tried to wash my hands. Speaking to the train manager confirmed that there was a.) no water in this carriage, b.) no space to be moved to another part of the train. So my journey was going to be much closer to that of a British sleeper after all…