Cycling around the Åland!

After arriving to Mariehamn in saturday, I have been staying at my couchsurfing host´s place. Still no bad words about couchsurfing! ;) I have been doing little tours around the island, to Finström and Sund.  Like early said, Åland and Archipelago are really great areas for cycling, but one thing there is that can annoy the yesterday´s pasta out of you: wind.

Most of my trip since going from Inkoo, I have had a headwind, which really makes the treading much more harder. I´m not sure if I´ve just had bad luck, or is it just more common to have the wind blowing from the southwest (like the song says), which is the direction I have been heading to. Anyway, I would recommend these routes  to anyone interested in bicycle travelling. Just keep an eye for the winds,  and maybe plan your trip to go from southwest, not to southwest, and you just might have tailwind for you all the way :)

Yep, it was a windy day.

Sunday was really windy day. Expect that the weather was totally fine. And I saw a dead deer in the ditch next to the road. Poor guy, in Lapland the (rein)deer herders already would  have been taking the corpse away for the possible meat and solving out the payments. Not here, they are just wild animals.

Apparently he was hit to one of the hind legs by a car.

 After cycling about 5 km in the great headwind, I saw a church. This day, the wind was not so annoying, I didn´t have to hurry for anything, and I was just carrying a little bit of stuff in my bicycle bags. I was not in a hurry, so I decided to check the church. I´m not a religious guy, but churches always make a big impression, when you will get to go inside of them.

Yes, I was that lazy that didn´t move to have the church properly in the picture ;)

It´s crazy how people have been able, and motivated to build such massive and impressing buildings, even though they had lack of basic facilities of life (from the point of view of today). I don´t really know if people were really so religious that they wanted to sacrifice so much to worship God, or if all that was done just to control people. I´m not amazed that church had a huge affect on peoples lives, since the space inside of the church is so unique (especially in those days): lot of space, impressing colors and paintings, absolute silence with all little voices echoing, so that you can almost hear your own heart beating clearly. It´s easy to make a feeling of holiness and presence of supernatural to ones head with all those things contributing it. However, the church of Jomala was really nice :)

Åland is really agricultural area, and  if you wanna see lot of sheep, cows and horses, here you have them every second kilometer growling next to the road. It was funny to notice people keeping horses and big highland cattle within the same fences. You would just think in a urban mind, there will be some trouble some day because of that. Instead, if you´re big friend of apples, choose a little bit later time to visit Åland. There are lot of apple farms here, and also lot of of wild apple trees, but for now, they are too raw to be eaten. Just come in the middle of august, and I bet you can eat your belly full of tasty local fresh apples, either from a store or from the trees :D

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Performing stage of  Ställhagen, a beer factory and a pub

When you are doing tours around the island, and during the first part you have headwind blowing to you, for the second part you will most certainly have tailwind pushing you. That´s what happened this time also, and coming back was, - like, to be honest, the whole day- really easy job. I passed the Church of Godby, which was cooler from outside than the Jomala´s, unluckily you it was already closed from inside. Close to the church was a nice path to a top of a hill, where you could see great landscapes of Åland from a tower. Also there you could be figuring out when will the tower collapse for the enormous wind. So far it was still standing. Day was only about 50 kilometers of cycling, but a_lot_of things to see!

I´ll be back!