Days are running out now!

Sandy diving into the lake this evening after sauna.

Now it's Olivia's turn...

Anna on the balcony at the front of the house in stunning light this evening!

The house looks fantastic in the evening sunshine tonight!

From another angle to the house.

This evening's sauna oil - forest herbs!

Gorgeous sunshine this evening - no wonder I'm happy!

It's sunny this evening again, after a grey start today. We spent the afternoon at the spa swimming pool area at Peurunka, where we've always been at least once each year. Keith loved the swimming pool and huge slide as he always does. He also swam enthusiastically back here and he's been very relaxed and happy the whole time this year. He's even sung loudly when Sandy has put various songs on the radio when we've been in the car, surprising Sandy with his wide knowledge of 90s songs especially!

Last night Olivia spent a couple of hours trampoline training with Timo's daughter Wenla and her friends at a sports hall in Jyvaskyla. I have to admit the place was very, very well resourced with loads of fantastic equipment there!

Varkaus: to see Jyrki and co, then speedway!

On Tuesday 18th, we headed east to Varkaus, about 60 miles away, to see our oldest Finnish friends Jyrki and Mari as well as their boys Antti-Jussi and Ville-Veikko. It was really lovely to catch up with them once again - they are such wonderful folk! Then we headed to the local speedway track, where ex Edinburgh rider Kalle Katajisto started his career. The Varkaus team were racing against Pori, Seinajoki and Hyvinkaa, and they managed to beat them all in a close finish with Pori. It was a good bit colder than recent days but at least the heavy and thundery showers which had been all around managed to miss the stadium itself! And a crowd of 450 paying adults were there to see it, boosted by us a little! 

 Can you spot us? Clue - top left of this part of the grandstand.

 Local boy Jesse Mutonen here in the white helmet was the only rider to beat Latvian Kasts Puodzuks, in the red helmet. 

 It's very simple, but the track itself is fast and wide which means there is plenty of chances for good racing, and on a sunny, warm night, it's certainly a lovely place to watch speedway!

Locals Tero Aaarnio (white) and Appe Mustonen (yellow) make a good start against Puodzuks the Latvian (blue) but he rode a super race to beat both of them. He is an internationalist for his country, so it was to be expected!

Time to take Anna's folks back to Lahti...

On Monday, we made the 200 mile round trip down to Lahti and back to see off Anna's family as they caught their train back to St Petersburg. After the fabulous weather of Sunday, it was raining! And there was quite a bit of thunder on the way down and back. It was around midnight before we got home, so a late evening and a long lie into Tuesday!

End of week 1

We've been here a week already! It has fairly flown past, and it helps when the weather is as good as it was today.  As the weather forecast had predicted, hardly a cloud in the sky all day long. I was up at before 6.00am this morning, for some reason unable to sleep, and at that point when I looked out, the lake was actually misty, but as I sat watching it, the mist cleared as the sun grew stronger and ever higher in the sky.

By the hot-tub this afternoon...

Taking a break from swimming to relax for a while reading...

The sun made the lake warmer today - and Keith loved it! (So did everyone else too!)

So, it was a day of sunbathing for us all. Keith enjoyed hours of swimming again, and the water temperature was up 2C from at any point in the past week! No wonder he enjoyed it so much!
At one point this afternoon, when it was especially calm, I decided to have a second try out with my drone. I had tried a few mini-flights three or four days ago, and today I wanted to take it above the trees and out a bit over the lake and back. I can laugh about it now, but it all went horribly wrong as the drone drifted out over the lake and didn't seem to be responding to the repeated attempts from me to return it to base! Sandy kept his eye on it as it flew away to the far side of the lake, crashed into trees and fell into the lake. He was immediately into the water swimming as fast as he could across the lake and I followed in the boat, rowing furiously. We both agreed it was lost as we approached the other side, but incredibly shortly afterwards, I spotted it in among some reeds, and although it had hit the water, it was above the waterline and we rescued it. We brought it home wet, but I think once it has had a day or so to dry out, it should be ok, as all the controls seemed still to be working fine.
I think I need to play about with it on a big field for the moment...!

 That's Olivia diving into the lake, taken by me at the house!

And on the platform...

Tomorrow we take Anna's family back down to Lahti and their train home. That's in the evening, so it'll be late by the time we get home. Then on Tuesday, we head over to Varkaus to see our old friends Jyrki and Mari and their boys - I can hardly believe it's already 10 years since we started out working together! And that evening, we will also head to Varkaus speedway stadium, for a Finnish speedway league match!

Anna's mum and dad.

She's fit, isn't she? ;-)

Off to swim!

                         Swimmers 

Some photos from today.

Some fiddling around with my various cables as well as my camera and laptop has seen a result - I was able to get my pictures safely uploaded across to the laptop.
Today, Saturday, has been a really lovely day. It was a bit cool first thing, but that didn't stop Keith heading out after a late breakfast to start sunbathing.  Soon, with the breeze slipping away and sun getting ever warmer, it was getting really warm, so we simply took saunas, bathed in the lake and enjoyed the hot-tub. Anna made a gigantic lasagne for dinner, so we enjoyed that outside and continued to swim and sauna right up to around 8.30pm. Keith will likely sleep very well tonight!

 Posers!

 Beauty!

 Discussions...

 Sunbathers!

 Playing...

 Filming!

 Gaming...

 Concentration...

 Calmness!

Reflections!

News from week 1

After our arrival here on Monday I was hopeful of writing each day up with photos as I have done over the past few years. However, things didn't quite work out as planned!  The first night I tried to upload photos from my camera to my now very old laptop, I hit a problem.  For some reason the laptop wouldn't transfer the pictures across from the camera. This has happened a couple of times over the years, but I've managed to fix it by rebuilding the iPhoto library, which takes a few hours. This time it didn't want to work though.
Eventually I managed via WiFi to transfer a few pictures from the camera to the laptop but that's a very laborious process, so I simply gave up and relaxed for a few days. After all, I'm on holiday,  right?
Anyhow, since then, we've dotted around the house and garden, taken the daily saunas and swam each day in the lake. After a great start weather wise, it rained a bit in midweek and it is now a bit cooler but this weekend looks like it will be very sunny, so we will enjoy the sunshine right here. Olivia spent an hour with Timo's daughter Wenla at a local trampoline park one night and will return to another place for training with Wenla next Thursday evening. Also, on Tuesday next week we will travel to Varkaus to see our old friends the Ikonen family and I'm certainly looking forward to seeing Jyrki, Mari and the boys again. Also, while we are there, we will visit the speedway at Varkaus for a rare league meeting!
Keith has been very relaxed all week. He's loving the swimming and saunas and has been in great form with everyone.

2017 arrival in Finland

Waking this morning close to Helsinki airport, it struck me how often we have arrived to similar brilliant weather. The sun was splitting the trees and there wasn't a cloud in the sky as we left Helsinki close to 8.20am and headed to our first stop to collect Anna's parents from Lahti train station.

Lovely countryside and sun as we headed north this morning.

 Typical landscapes in the land of 188,000 lakes!

It's great to be back here again!

Olivia at close by Leppavesi diving boards. 

In front of the cottage this afternoon.

A smooth drive brought us to our favourite place in Finland by lunch time, having stopped off for things at the supermarket close by first. And after that, it was simply time to enjoy the afternoon, as it was sunny, warm and everyone was keen to get into the sauna and the lake!
Writing this around nine hours later, we've finally come inside, having enjoyed a super first day here again! Endless sauna session and swims, as well as a trip to the nearby lake of Leppavesi to let Sandy and Olivia leap off the high diving boards and Keith to have a dip in the lake there too, followed by more of the same back here. It's great to be back!

Test

Next week, we'll be there!