I could really feel that my energy was low after yesterday’s monster stage. I woke up and just didn’t want to get out of bed. Around 12:15, I managed to get out of the room and over to the supermarket for some breakfast. This is gonna be a hard day.
After buying some food and drinks to have for breakfast and during the trip today, I started cycling. There is no energy, nothing. No matter what I ate, it’s not working.
Already after 15-20Km I started looking for a place to stay for the night. But Finland is Finland, and there is basically nothing. I continued. After about 50Km there is a sign with a bed, knife and fork. I need to have a place with food, since i haven’t bought that much.
I came up to this place and it was a note saying that I needed to call to get a room. This doesn’t look good when it comes to food. What good is a room if there is no food to get more energy out of? When the owner came, he just confirmed that… I continued.
There’s been a sign to Värtsilä all day, I’m guessing that this is the place I need to go for. Let’s just hope that this is a place with people, campings, hotels, supermarket and so on.
Finally I’m there. I stop at this small place which have the same sign as the other one. Another closed door, with a note: call us to get a room. I called again, this was an old guy, barely speaking english, but we managed to communicate in some way. I understood that a friend of him would open up to me and that they might fix some food.
His friend comes to the door after about 3-5 minutes. He doesn’t speak a word english. I walk in and sit down. He walks in to the kitchen, and I have a quick look. It looks like the dishes haven’t been done for a year. The plates, glasses and everything is going to the roof.
I quickly tried to communicate to him that I’m leaving, and so I did.
900 meters later you have Hotel Joki, which is a small cosy hotel with 7 large rooms, sauna and so on. I’m really in need of relaxing now. A nice lady opened up for me and said she would make me some lasagna and salat while I was taking a shower.
When I came for dinner, the owner was here as well, a young and friendly woman. The Lasagna and salat was amazing. Full meal, and I could almost roll out of there when I was finished.
I walked back to my room and stopped at the reception to pay. I continued speaking with the owner of the hotel for about an hour. What a positive energy and friendly person. Just after the last 2 hours, my day have gone from one of the worst in this trip, to one of the one’s that I’ll remember as a positive day.
To be honest, with the energy I had today, I didn’t take a single picture, I’ll promise you I’ll be better tomorrow!
GPS Data for today’s stage:
Hi Stian,
you must be crazy………… 160 km per day! It’s not surprising that you’re tired the next day……
Hope you’ll be more careful to your health the next days!
Hi Mary and Pit,
Yes I get that all the time 🙂 Crazy in a good way they keep saying! 😉 I’m having 2 days of rest in Imatra now, then 1 day on bicyle to Vaalimaa. I will wait in Hamina for some days, until my visa is active! While I’m resting in Hamina, I will get a visit, which will be really nice! 🙂 How is your preparations going?