Blogging at 22:00 on Thursday 15th August from intended overnighting spot N 62.55891°, E 24.58689° / http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loc:62.55891%2C24.58689
Emma's now feeling poorly, whilst I'm - painfully slowly - continuing to rally.
Last night's camp was indeed a real beauty and was blessed with the kind of portentous silence that's more than a little disconcerting. We were also mindful that it was the first time in well over two weeks that we'd encountered anything of a proper night. For a couple of hours anyway, it was genuinely properly dark.
Before bed, Emma had set up the trail-cam and, though it captured nothing, it looks like we had a very near miss. On the forest track about 30 metres behind the truck were a series of very large hoof prints that betrayed a reasonably obvious scenario. It appeared that what was probably a large elk had approached during the night but had, for some reason, become frightened and so had 'braked' hard before scrabbling into the undergrowth and scarpering. We guess it may have caught a whiff of us, or had heard one us moving around in bed or something. Close, but no doughnut.
Just before leaving camp this morning, Emma spotted what she at first though was a mammal walking along the very same track some distance away but, with the benefit of bins and a bit of sneaking up, turned out to be two female / immature capercaillie. A first for us both!
After breaking camp, a long forest drive was the first order of the day (view from the cab shown in pic) and this revealed another surprise as we (twice) disturbed black-coloured adders, each about 40-50cm long, that had been taking the morning sun on the warm aggregates of the track.
The main drive today has been another blissfully peaceful one with virtually no traffic all day. Once off the major arterial routes (and even sometimes on them) there just isn't that much moving. Because there's so much room and the roads so quiet, even the occasional mega-truck encounter is no stress.
The trucks are indeed worth a mention. I waxed about them last time we were in Scandinavia, but some appear today to be even more massive and imposing than they were then. They're invariably immaculately painted, are often fitted with beautifully engineered stainless elk-bars and sport showground-fit attention to detail. Big Volvos, Mercedes and Scanias seem most popular, and the truck / trailer configurations are whacky.
A very common combination is a huge rigid truck of about 10-12m length with two steered wheels and then a tri-axle rear setup. The truck then invariably has a draw-bar dolly with two axles and a fifth-wheel coupling. Sitting on the fifth-wheel coupling is then an enormously long semi trailer, I'd guess up to maybe 15m in length. The semi trailer itself will invariably have a tri-axle setup. All axles except the steerers often bear twin-wheels rather than singles so - adding the whole shebang up - that's 34 very expensive tyres per rig. They're phenomenal things and I'd guess must be up around 70 tonnes when loaded.
Anyway, back to our tiddler; some housekeeping has seen us taking Finnish diesel (anything between €1.65 and 1.85 per litre) and doing our customary once-per-three-weeks fresh-water refill. The water was from a petrol station. It was designated potable and the garage attendant was quite happy for us to take as much as we needed for free: no other purchases required. Finland!
Tonight's intended kipping spot is again up one of the innumerable and extremely common forest tracks. Emma's pretty groggy so has been both dozing and irascibly blaspheming quite a bit, but I've had a proper look out for the first time in days. Though there's been very little moving I have seen whinchat for the first time. This isn't that uncommon a bird, but for some reason has consistently - until now - eluded me.
Sent from my mobile device