The accommodation on this tour has blown our minds. When you go by car, you end up in stupid hotels that all look the same. When you go by bike, somehow you end up in every kind of strange, beautiful places.

So far we have stayed overnight, for example, in:

• former nursing home
• former school, that was renovated for hunting dog association’s happenings
• splendid villa in Turku archipelago
• open wilderness hut
• small bar’s basement
• old farm in the middle of turf production bogs
• numerous private homes

All of them have been great, and made us feel welcome. All of them have been experiences that we remember. A tourist with his lonely planet guide will never find anything like them.

The next few nights we stay in an ancient farm by Kokemäenjoki river. The ”new” main building was built in 1912. It feels like we are visiting a very old and quite rich relative. But we have all the rooms, apple trees and buildings for ourselves.

It was a long ride from Helsinki to Turku, where we slept in an apartment of our friend’s friend’s friend. He was not home but we got the keys from his friend. Very friendly.

It was a normal ride from Turku to Iniö, except that we had to cheat. Iniö is an island, and we had to take a ferry. We are getting lazy and did not get a CO2-free row boat.

Iniö concert with extremely ad hoc PA system went well. The holiday season was at its very end, but there was a good audience at the local meeting point, Cafe Leonella. The owner of the place seemed happy with the business, which made us happy also.

After the concert a local nurse asked us to play next day in an old people’s home, and of course we accepted the invitation. It was an honor to play to the seventeen inhabitants of the nursing home, and it was a challenge to speak their native Swedish to them.

After the concerts we were offered a chance to spend a few days in a beautiful villa on the island. We have enjoyed that kind of hospitality and generosity a lot during this tour. When you ride a bike and play music there seems to be a huge amount of good people around you.

So we stayed there and watched moon waning, summer ending, autumn starting. We also visited Keistiö island and saw how Finnish archipelago has changed. On the small islands there is no one living and working. The fields grow nothing, shops have closed down, harbours are empty. The archipelago has turned into a summer holiday park. This time of the year it makes us a bit sad.

No, summer is not over and neither is this tour. Tomorrow morning we start a long ride first to Turku and then to Iniö. It will rain in the morning, and we will probably feel miserable.

But we know that after a few kilometers we get into the groove. We still have concerts to play, roads to ride and things to do. The tour continues – a week or so.

It is more difficult to leave, because we have been adapting to normal work schedule for a while. But, hopefully, it will be easier to be away. And it was easier to pack up.

Check out the concert list for more.

Next thursday we will do this: Ride around Helsinki and play with friends. Not bad.

Hope you can join us. It is all free and fun and good for you!

Today we have to split. Emilia continues to Joutsa for a violin training camp with Suvi Oskala. Then they play a concert in Mäntyharju.

Kare has to take car and pick up our cats from Suolahti and go back to Helsinki to work. That is not fun.

Emilia’s bike setup looks aerodynamic, uh?

When we meet people on the road they usually start talking about the Finnish summer that has been unusually cold and wet. Well, Finnish summer usually is cold and wet, but this summer has been a bit worse than usual.

 
From our point of view it does not matter. We are riding from one place to another, not trying to take sunbaths. The temperature has been comfortable for riding and there has been only three days of continuous rain.

Yesterday was the first hot, sunny day of the tour, and it took time to adapt. We felt lazy. Luckily it was only 168 km ride, so we had time to let ourselves feel lazy.

Now we are in Ilmajoki, which looks like a nice and wealthy little village in the middle of flatlands of southern Ostrobothnia. The local festival Spelit is deeply rooted to the soil and people. The area is full of groups of middle aged people playing together. Some of them may hopefully even end up listening to our concert.

We have been on a holiday in Keuruu for a week or so. Well, Emilia has been doing a music video for her band Suo and Kare has been doing some maintenance work at his parents’ summer apartment.

We have not given interviews, updated social media, ridden our bicycles or played the violin. And that’s what we needed. This tour has not been a holiday, even though it may have looked like a nice bike tour in Finnish summer.

But now we are getting restless. There is still work to do on this tour. Today we played a little, and tomorrow we will ride a long way to Ilmajoki.