Today was mainly a day of travelling, generally heading towards Helsinki, although we are not planning to be there until tomorrow afternoon. We aimed for the area around Kouvola. Here, there is a campsite but it is a large one with an amusement park. Not at all our sort of place, particularly as their charge would be around €32.
I had identified on Pocket Earth a possible wild camp. We drove there and it is fine. It is a parking area surrounded by woodland, close to a beach. Pocket Earth only shows a path going to it but this couldn't be right. Anyway, there is a road and there have only been a few other vehicles here for short stays. There is a single earth closet WC. The GPS co-ordinates are 60.92648°N 26.74552°E.
I walked the paths around the car park. Along one, there are some weekend cabins but the path goes west right to the end of the spit of land there. In the other direction, east, there is a beach walk for a quarter mile. In the summer, I should think the car park would be full, as it would take at least fifty cars. Anyway, it's now 8.30 and in the last hour there have only been two cars going to/from the cabins. An occasional flock of geese has gone overhead rather noisily.
Amanda
Time to head back to Helsinki. We are far enough
away to want to break the journey, but could find no places of
particular interest on the way. The obvious place, Kouvola, didn't
seem to have much to offer except a large water park and amusement park with attached campsite, which may or may not be open, but which
didn't appeal anyway, for some reason.
As this would be our last night in rural Finland I was happy for Geoff to find a possible wild camp where he could do a little bit of walking. Some trial and error work with the Pocket Earth app came up with the spot where we are now. Just northeast of Kouvola, and on the southern edge of the Repovesi National Park, he found a car park on the edge of a lake, which looked on the map to be in the middle of nowhere. In fact there is a little hut WC of the earth closet variety, and paths leading through the trees to the beach where there is a changing hut. In the summer it is obviously very popular - probably room for a hundred or so cars in the car park - but it is empty now.
As this would be our last night in rural Finland I was happy for Geoff to find a possible wild camp where he could do a little bit of walking. Some trial and error work with the Pocket Earth app came up with the spot where we are now. Just northeast of Kouvola, and on the southern edge of the Repovesi National Park, he found a car park on the edge of a lake, which looked on the map to be in the middle of nowhere. In fact there is a little hut WC of the earth closet variety, and paths leading through the trees to the beach where there is a changing hut. In the summer it is obviously very popular - probably room for a hundred or so cars in the car park - but it is empty now.
After lunch Geoff
went off and did a number of walking circuits in different
directions, I joined him for one, through the woods and along the
long sandy lakeside beach strewn with fallen pine cones and
needles. Although there is a track along the edge of the car
park which seems to go to some houses, I should think it will be a
quiet, and dark, night.
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