Wind. Slow. Kilometres crawl by. Irritation.
Wind drops. Side roads – forest road, meteor crater road, sunny entrance into Vasa. My last day in Finland for this part of the trip. A sunny exit.
Day 29. 124km. Kristiinankaupunki – Vasa. Map and gpx.
It rained overnight and was raining when I contemplated getting up. I rolled over and went back to sleep. I checked the weather. It would clear up but my lovely tailwind has become a strong headwind. 😦 I’ve been spoiled up to now.
It was also colder and cloudy. Was my sunbathing/cycling trip going to come to an end?
No. The clouds went.
But the wind stayed and the kilometres crawled past and were no fun. I was a moderately main road, on and on into the wind.
As I promised Jarno in an earlier post, I would give a clearer photo of the bike signs. Here is a (rare) clear one.
Here is how most of them look.
No problem though. My route is described in detail.
I passed through my first seriously Swedish speaking parts. All signs were only in Swedish. In Närpes it was carnival market day and the comedian there spoke in Swedish. Actually, I spent most of the day in exclusively Swedish speaking parts. Närpes, Korsnäs, and then mostly Swedish speaking Malax. I kept to the main road and didn’t do the detours on my planned route. Head down and into the wind. Maybe I should have.
After my second lunch stop in a parking stop on the forest road, I detected that the wind was easing, and turning more into a side wind. I felt happier and took one of the detours. Off the main road I noticed the sun was shining and I am in Finland! Cycled here from Holland. A cool forest road. No cars. Just birds. And dragonflies.
My next side trip surprised me. Suddenly the road descended from the forest into a broad plane with fields. The dead straight road, flanked by beautiful flowers, passed through a meteor crater.
And then there was Vaasa. With perfect sunning weather people were swimming and eating and drinking in the terraces. Also sunning in unusual places.
I’ve deserved a nice hotel after all that wind. I’m staying in the Radisson tonight. 🙂
Tomorrow is the boat, and Sweden.
arctic-cycler.com 
Do you use wasalines? Where did you bought the ticket?
(In some pictures you look like a L. Armstrong) 🙂
Hi there.
I am hoping to use Wasaline. Buying the ticket has been a problem up to now. The Hotline has been busy and online there is no way to buy a ticket for the bike. I intend to buy a ticket at the harbour. I hope that works. 🙂
Yes. I get asked that a lot – if I am Lance Armstrong. 🙂
Great photographic cycling report.
Thanks Sartenada!:-)
Thanks for the sign update, I missed that point totally in your earlier posting. Anyway, I’m not surprised that the cycling signs are not updated recently (maybe not even on this millennium) since as I once told you, Finland has been called to be Europe’s most American country, i.e. owning a car is the thing and if the car is better than that of the neighbour’s – even better 🙂
Nice to see that you have been guided through the nice places on the south coast (Tammisaari, Turku and the small islands in front of Turku), would have also been my recommendations, though I was a bit late 😉 Safe trip to Sweden and Norway, see you (soon) in de Lichtstad!
BR, Jarno
Hi Jarno.
Although the bike signs are not too new in Finland, it is the only country in my route that has official detailed Eurovelo gpx files for downloading. Excellent work. The rest of my route was put together by me using different sources.
Greetings from Ånäset in Sweden. 🙂