1st day at Lake Kankijarvi- back to basics!

Anna on the jetty!

Looking back from the lake to the sauna.
We arrived here, close to Ruovesi in Western Finland, in mid-afternoon. The weather was sunny and warm and we headed to a small shop, or kioski, in the national park here, where our host gave us our keys to the cottage. On arrival, we found that the place is very small, and very basic- and it's a bit of a shock after the last place we stayed in close to Jyvaskyla. I realised last week that the description of the place did not mention a shower, so I was hoping fervently that there would be one here. Unfortunately, there isn't! So, to wash, we have to heat a large stove next to the sauna down by the lake, and mix this hot water with cold water that is pumped from the lake and throw it all over ourselves in a small tiled area next to the sauna itself! This will be interesting! The cottage itself is tiny- and we are all sleeping upstairs on mattresses on the floor, at the top of some extremely steep stairs.

Apart from that, the lake has a diving board and it's our own lake, as there are no other cottages here. Sandy and Olivia are oblivious to the fact that the place is small- they were leaping enthusiastically from the diving board into the lake repeatedly this evening after our sauna session! And, to be fair, it's very beautiful here!

We plan to visit Tampere at least once this week, to spend a day at Sarkanniemi Adventure Park, and perhaps another day to look around the city itself. And, the weather seems destined to warm up a bit from mid-week too, with 25C looking possible on Wednesday at the moment.

Finally, there seems to be no phone signal here, for some reason. It's certainly pretty remote, but the strange thing is that I can get an internet signal via my SIM card powered internet stick, which seems very strange! However, that signal is weak and intermittent, so uploading many pictures might take me a while! We will see!