1. We investigated the world of Rallicross at Ylämylly. This turned out to be fabulously trailer trash, and incredibly entertaining. It had the excitement of cars streaking round a 1km track what felt like inches from your nose (with characteristic Finn disregard for health and safety, the spectators were sat on small banks, with a stretchy piece of tape stopping them from getting too close to the track), combined with several grilli stalls, a pit lane/section you could wander round and see the cars being worked on, and a large proportion of trollied Finns, kicking back with 97 cans of beer. It was extremely dusty, dirty, and excellent fun! There was much high speed barging of rally cars (and lots of bits falling off, including rather worryingly a wheel at one point, which careered down the track, bounced through and over a crowd of spectators, and landed on some poor person's car in the car park. Here's a driver's eye view: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTzqY-wolEU (though sadly not of the wheel-escape incident!).
And here's me and M watching, post-makkara (hence all the ketchup). We like the ear defenders...
Despite the drunken Finns, there were lots of kids and dads having a nice day out, and everyone was very friendly. We'll definitely go again next year!
2. We celebrated Midsummer in style, with our friends Anu and Heikki, including a sauna, grilli and kokko (bonfire). Here's us (and about 5,400 mosquitos) at 10.30pm. We went to bed about 1am, and it still wasn't dark...just white twilight.
3. We went on some more cycle expeditions, mostly through the woods in Noljakka. Here we are on our way to our new favourite place (Avaranta beach).
The trail through Noljakka is excellent - all the more so because we tried it on skis in the snow. It looks very different now! (M's bottom-sliding hill is now covered in tall green grass, and the vast plains of white on either side are now revealed as fields...).
