Relaxed on Aland

Total distance: 1194 km
Aland islands: Mariehamn - Skarpnatö - Vardö - Kumlinge - Brändö

We arrived in Mariehamn around midnight local time. Aland as well as mainland Finland are one hour ahead of France and Germany. The ferry opened its gates and only two of us on our bicycles left the ferry. They were so many people on board that we simply expected a lot of them to disembark on Aland. Obviously they were all heading for the mainland instead. It was a funny picture and we laughed: a big ferry made a stop-over for two cyclists. For those who want to know: Viking Line ferries get you from Stockholm to Mariehamn for about 22 Euro including bicycle. Booking online saves you 5 Euro extra service fee.

When we found the camp site, it was already 1 am. This was when I met following cool Finn enjoying his beer ...

The distances on Aland were not big, said the guide from the tourist information. And indeed our first day on the main Aland island ended after only 50 km. The islands are rocky ones. Big red rocks are everywhere and in particular at the coastline. It made camping at the beach nearly impossible. We decided to cycle the northern part of the main island and the archipelago and do island-hopping until Finland.

Aland doesn't differ much from Sweden. Common houses are the beautiful wooden houses, painted in red and white. Typical for the Aland islands are the red roads. The islands are mostly flat and attract many cyclists. We saw many more or less heavily loaded cyclists and our guess was in most cases that they must be Germans. There is a lot of water. It's hard not to see any blue water spot when you look in all directions. On most camp sites and public rest areas pit toilets are standard. Hey, but they do not smell!

On Saturday we ran out of food. Well, we had our emergency packs, but they can't be called food. We would survive though. Saturday 26th of June was the midsummer holiday. We only noticed it when we stopped at a little shop on the little island Seglinge. Our hope was to stock up for the weekend, but we were left with our emergency packs. It's funny to see where your thoughts go when you are hungry. We were dreaming of juicy zebra cheese cake with berries, a cup of coffee and sitting on the sunny terrace. How great would that have been? We agreed to bake every weekend when we'll be back home. Zebra cheese cake ... mhhhh!

We stayed over the midsummer weekend on the little islands Kumlinge, Seglinge and Brändö. They can be found in the northeastern archipelago of Aland. The ferry (free for pedestrians and cyclists) brought us from the main island to the archipelago. The free ferries are cheap means of transportation and connect Aland with mainland Finland. So we did a lot of island-hopping: one day on Kumlinge and Seglinge, the other day on Brändö. All islands are not big at all. We didn't pedal a lot. Generally speaking you can reach an island's end after 12 km or less. You can imagine, our days on Aland were rather lazy days.

As we were on Aland around midsummer we could see here and there what midsummer is like. We saw men cutting off branches and twigs, women and children picking flowers for the midsummer poles. Even the ferries were decorated with twigs. The naked midsummer poles in every village were lying horizontally on the ground, connected through a joint to a stand. Unfortunately we did not see any being erected during a midsummer party, but we could hear people singing in the evenings.