On the way south from Oulu there was a suprise awaiting me in the bushes beside the highway. It was big, brown and it nearly made me jump off my bike. Luckily they have put moose proof fencing that lines the side of the highway in forested areas in Finland or I would most probably have ended up bouncing off this big, roadblock-like animal. Anyway, it has satisfied my craving to see one of these beasts in Scandanavia and now I can crave the site of another animal, perhaps a bear or a siberian tiger, hopefully also behind a fence.
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Once further south I was again lucky to be offered a free pitch at a campsite in a place called Himanka. When I got there I set about the important task of having a shower, which I sometimes forget to do. But this was not going to be straight forward, as soon as I found the shower block I was thrown into 2 days and nights of party courtesy of my new pal Marko who had heard of the arrival of ‘the englishman’ and found me before I even had a chance to find the shower block. That evening I was treated to an evening of finnish karaoke and then told I had no choice but to participate as Marko and his friends had already announced that ‘the englishman’ was coming to sing to an audience of expectant campers and caravanners. I was told that I was to sing ‘Delila’ and that my new stage name (a name I was given for the next 2 days across the campsite) was Tom Jones. What I had not been told was the lyrics on the screen were all in finnish, I tried my best and sang what I read, which was probably a load of Finglish. Luckily the audience didn’t notice I couldn’t speak a word of finnish (or so they told me) and they seemed to like the strange take on this 60′s classic. The karaoke debacle was followed the next day by a traditional finnish sauna (with lots of beer) and a naked swim in the ice cold river running beside the campsite to freeze off . So I didn’t need a shower after all. Super.