Skip to main content

Story time: Time's no more

For a while I've had this strange urge to visit a small town called Sammaljoki. I have no idea why. I decided to ride there as it made a nice 200km roundtrip.

It was a great ride. Beautiful country side, colors of autumn and nearly empty roads.

Theater of imagination

After around 30 kilometres I saw a small signpost saying something about an outdoor theater. I ride past the sign, but after couple of minutes I decided to turn around and go see what that sign was all about.

There was a beautiful theater by a lake. I went to the top of the grandstand to sit there awhile. View was amazing, leaves where falling of from the trees as autumn starts to take over the land. There was a scent of old leaves in the air. It was completely silent. Almost like time ceased to exist.

Outdoor theater

I probably lost at least 30 minutes just by listening that nothingness.

Shed that was

My route took me to an seemingly old and bumpy gravel road. The road was surrounded by fields and very high rocks. Forest on top of those rocks looked very old. Thick trees on the cliffs looked almost magical. I felt an urge to leave my bike somewhere and climb up to see the view but didn't as those rocks were very high and hard to get to.

I continued the ride and felt like that my road bike was not an optimal machine to ride on the bumpy gravel road. After the next intersection I saw an old shed in the woods which had a door wide open. The place for it was beautiful, there was a small river running underneath the shed. I think the place was an old abandoned water mill, very small one. 

Carpenter shed

As the door for the upstairs part of the shed was open I took a peek inside. There was a room that had a smell of old wood and dust. It felt like no one had been there for a long, long time. It was an old tool shed for a carpenter. I can only imagine how it was working there while listening the river running underneath. No electricity. A place without rush, a home of handicrafts.

Wayfarers hope

After riding around 150 kilometres I saw an fairly old wooden church. Simply a beautiful peace of architecture in it's own right.


Put your mind back in time, say 800 years. You're an wayfarer, an adventurer, someone who nobody really waits for but wants to hear what you have to tell. You're someone that knows what is happening in the world. Life's not easy for you. It's walking, your home is on the road. After walking for days through a dense forest your eyes catch a cross shining on the high grounds. It's a church! It means warmth, maybe even food. 

Churches where mostly built on old holy places of pagans, usually fairly high and visible places, they must have been an important landmarks for wayfarers and wonderers alike.

Cheers,
Niko
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Story time: Heritage of wastelands

 This time my ride took me 100 kilometres of country side gravel roads deep into the forests via old fire roads. In autumn forests are not so dense and I like to think that it's the time of year forests reveals their secrets for the ones willing to look. No traffic, just gravel I was able to ride all by myself. Not a single car went by, not a single person was seen. There's something beautiful in riding small gravel roads that go through dense forests. The sound of the tyres rolling on a gravel road is kind of peaceful and meditative. Add some autumn breeze and colourful leaves falling of from the trees and you can easily loose yourself there. It's what riding gravel is all about. Sensations, adventure and discovery. Do you ever think about the roads you're riding on? Why they were built? How old they are? Surprisingly many roads go back in history for hundreds of years. Many roads used to be just a small tracks or carriage roads. Revealing secrets I was around 40 kilom
Post a Comment
Read more

Story time: Two worlds

 This time my gravel ride took me fairly deep into forest. The ride was only around 60 kilometres long, but most of it was ridden in very small forest roads deep in the wilderness. Weather was cold and very damp. I started thinking that I should find some place to make a campfire. I kind of knew that this area had lean-to shelters here and there. Wisdom of age While riding deeper and deeper into the forest I saw group of big stones and rocks. It looked interesting. It looked wild. It reminded me how young mankind really is compared to these stones thrown around by ice sheet thousands and thousands years ago. We should never forget how bloody small and young we are. Mankind must respect things older than itself. Left behind I left my bicycle for a while and went exploring the forest around the stones. I had a feeling I might find something interesting and I truly did. There was an old campsite. Just wondering what's the story behind it? There are no visible trails leading to it. No
Post a Comment
Read more

Bicycle Maintenance: Basics

Bicycles are very durable little machines. However, like any mechanical thing, they do need some maintenance sometimes. If you ride a lot of kilometers per year, maintaining your bicycle is even more important. Even more so in long distance riding. You wouldn't want something to break when you're 300 kilometers from home. How do I maintain my bicycles? I ride two bicycles, a fixed gear bike for work commuting  (32km per day) and for running errands. Another bicycle I own is for long distance riding, I tend to ride three to four long distance trips every month. For the every day bicycle, maintenance is very minimal and easy. Fixed gear bikes are very durable as they don't have much that can go wrong very easily. I keep the chain lubricated and clean. I keep the bike reasonably clean overall. Periodically I check that the chain is not streched too much and that chainring and sprocket are not worn too much. They are easy and cheap to replace. On my fixed gear bicycle I have a
Post a Comment
Read more