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There I was, minding my own business – sitting down to my dinner after a hard day at work, I flicked on the TV and started the usual hopeless progression through a succession of talent shows, reality shows and house-doing-up-and-selling shows. Then I found it.
“Ooh! Ray Mears!” I said, through a carefully engineered forkful of sausage, mashed potato and baked beans. “Exffellent!” (partially ingested sausage and mash is not helpful to proper enunciation). Ray was in the wilderness again; this time paddling his canoe over the smooth evening waters of a Finnish lake.
Having parked his boat on an island he leapt out, prepared a Salmon (which he’d presumably caught earlier in the day using a hook of thorns and line made from elk-gut) to Michelin Star standards and shared a bottle of malt whisky with an old friend over the warming embers of an open fire. By the time the programme credits were rolling I’d made my decision – by hook or by crook, I was going to Finland.
To be fair, this time I was relatively well prepared. I had taken up canoeing the previous summer, having built my own boat in a brief period of unemployment, and used it about half a dozen times. Compared to my cross-country skiing trip to Norway, I was a seasoned exponent of the art.
I sent a group email to my various adventurous friends, promising a mixture of beautiful Finnish girls, glorious sunshine and high adventure; none of which I was sure I could provide. However, I did get a positive response from my old mate Col, who is partial to a bit of all three. Some internet research later (mostly performed by Col, who is more suited to these things) and we had flights, hotels in Helsinki and Heinavesi, and a man with a canoe who was willing to rent it to us for a week. What’s more, he was willing to drop us off in one place and pick us up in another, so we wouldn’t have to back-track.
Col had only ever been canoeing once before and it was clear he hadn’t quite got the grasp of its peculiar pleasures. A phone call not long before departure went along these lines:
Col: “I’ve got all the gear I need. I’ve packed it all into a small hold-all. I thought I'd travel as light as possible.”
Me: “Really. Why?”
Col: “Um, well.. you know... I don’t want to weigh down the canoe.”
Me: “I suppose. How did you get your chair into a holdall?”
Col: “I’m not bringing a chair.”
Not bringing a chair? The man had clearly gone barmy.
Me: “Not bringing a chair? You’re barmy.”
Col: “Well, we are going into the depths of the Finnish wilderness.”
Me: “Yes. In a canoe. The whole point of going in a canoe is that you can take everything with you – including chairs, hardback books and duty free whisky... I hope you’re not going to try to restrict the cargo of beer and crisps?”
Col: “Good God no! Some things are non-negotiable.”
And so, towards the end of August, we found ourselves in the arrivals lounge at Helsinki Airport; Col swinging his holdall like a handbag and me staggering behind under the weight of my monstrous 80 litre dry-bag and luxury folding chair. Helsinki was nice, but we had wilderness to be in and early the following morning we were on the train to Heinavesi.
Finland, it would appear from the admittedly limited viewpoint of the top deck of a train (Finnish trains have two decks; they are also clean and punctual – it’s quite staggering), consists entirely of a vast forest punctuated by lakes. It bode well for our intended activity of paddling round lakes in a forest, but made for an extremely tedious railway journey which, if memory serves, lasted for fifteen days (Col insists it was more like five hours, but that doesn’t fit with my recollection at all).
We stayed overnight in Heinavesi, having arrived too late to set off that day. Our hotel was nice and clean, the staff friendly, the restaurant served tasty food and Col got chatted up by an utterly plastered woman of advanced maturity and admirable persistence. All in all, the perfect evening.
It took us most of the morning to sort out the canoe and supplies, although a significant proportion of this was getting fishing permits arranged. According to the guidebook, we needed no less than three separate permits if we wanted to go fishing. One would assume that these would be readily available at the local fishing shop, but no, the Finns take their fishing so seriously that they keep their permits in the bank. So we queued up with all the people cashing cheques and arranging mortgages and scored ourselves one fishing permit each. Apparently we were supposed to have another permit as well, but we couldn’t understand where the teller was saying we should buy it. We did try the petrol station and the off-licence, but they just looked at us as if we were crazy to want to buy a fishing permit anywhere other than a bank, so we gave up.
By lunchtime we had everything we needed for six days on the water and had loaded up the canoe. As we pushed the boat out onto the gently lapping waters of Lake Kermajavi, the sun was shining, the sky was blue and we had six days and hundreds of square miles of lakes and forest to explore. It was a great feeling.
The first day’s paddle was purposely a short one. Time to get used to the feel of the boat; work out roughly how far we could expect to paddle in a day; to decide where to store the camera, lunch and the other things we might want while out on the water. We were headed for an island just a few kilometres from our starting point on the far side of the lake. The map said it had an ‘official’ camping spot and we thought this would be a good place to start our adventure.
This part of Finland is simply a vast area containing millions of interconnected lakes and millions of acres of birch and pine forest. It is wonderfully unspoilt and incredibly wild. The silent passage of an open canoe through this ancient landscape is as serene an experience as can be imagined. In the week ahead we would travel through tight channels between broken cliffs, across wide lakes and on the sheltered waters amongst countless islands. And always, to our left and right, ahead of us and behind us, we would have the forest – endless, unbroken, wild and beautiful.
We arrived at our island in the late afternoon, with the baking summer sun still hot on our shoulders. The gentle breeze that had cooled our faces on the paddle over had died away and the water lay smooth and calm, with the cool clarity of a pool in a mountain stream. As Col would say, some things are non-negotiable and soon we were floating in the water in our board-shorts and life-jackets, supping our first cold beer in the wilderness.
The ‘official’ camping spot surpassed our expectations. Situated in a sheltered clearing amongst the trees, it even had a few facilities to make life more comfortable – a place for an open fire, a shed full of logs, and a long drop toilet. There were enough clear spaces to pitch perhaps three or four tents, but we had the place entirely to ourselves.
At sunset we did some fishing with the lures we’d bought at the fishing shop in Heinavesi. It wasn’t long before I had a perch wriggling and writhing on my line and he was soon reeled in and released. He was lucky that I was unaware that perch are edible, or he might have found himself in a sandwich. It was getting dark and I was just packing up my gear, when Col shouted over, indicating that he’d caught something.
“Uaargh!” He said, not quite managing to retain his composure.
“Ooh! Have you got something?” I asked.
“UUAAARGH!” He repeated, indicating that he had caught something rather more impressive than my 6 inch perch. Running over I saw his rod bent in tight curve, pointing like a twitching finger at the dark water of the lake. Col was playing something very large indeed. Unfortunately, neither Col or myself are experienced fishermen and we were at a loss to know what to do. We had only the most basic of equipment with us; just travel rods, reels and a few spinners – and we had no landing net.
Whatever it was, it was big and strong but was fighting a slow, heavy fight, completely unlike the wriggling of the perch or the vigorous thrashing of the trout I’d caught in Loch Awe earlier in the summer. I tried to see what kind of fish it was, but the dark shape remained resolutely below the surface, pulling relentlessly on the line and keeping its identity anonymous. It seemed to tire quite quickly, however, and within ten minutes Col was reeling it slowly in.
“Ooh! Ray Mears!” I said, through a carefully engineered forkful of sausage, mashed potato and baked beans. “Exffellent!” (partially ingested sausage and mash is not helpful to proper enunciation). Ray was in the wilderness again; this time paddling his canoe over the smooth evening waters of a Finnish lake.
Having parked his boat on an island he leapt out, prepared a Salmon (which he’d presumably caught earlier in the day using a hook of thorns and line made from elk-gut) to Michelin Star standards and shared a bottle of malt whisky with an old friend over the warming embers of an open fire. By the time the programme credits were rolling I’d made my decision – by hook or by crook, I was going to Finland.
To be fair, this time I was relatively well prepared. I had taken up canoeing the previous summer, having built my own boat in a brief period of unemployment, and used it about half a dozen times. Compared to my cross-country skiing trip to Norway, I was a seasoned exponent of the art.
I sent a group email to my various adventurous friends, promising a mixture of beautiful Finnish girls, glorious sunshine and high adventure; none of which I was sure I could provide. However, I did get a positive response from my old mate Col, who is partial to a bit of all three. Some internet research later (mostly performed by Col, who is more suited to these things) and we had flights, hotels in Helsinki and Heinavesi, and a man with a canoe who was willing to rent it to us for a week. What’s more, he was willing to drop us off in one place and pick us up in another, so we wouldn’t have to back-track.
Col had only ever been canoeing once before and it was clear he hadn’t quite got the grasp of its peculiar pleasures. A phone call not long before departure went along these lines:
Col: “I’ve got all the gear I need. I’ve packed it all into a small hold-all. I thought I'd travel as light as possible.”
Me: “Really. Why?”
Col: “Um, well.. you know... I don’t want to weigh down the canoe.”
Me: “I suppose. How did you get your chair into a holdall?”
Col: “I’m not bringing a chair.”
Not bringing a chair? The man had clearly gone barmy.
Me: “Not bringing a chair? You’re barmy.”
Col: “Well, we are going into the depths of the Finnish wilderness.”
Me: “Yes. In a canoe. The whole point of going in a canoe is that you can take everything with you – including chairs, hardback books and duty free whisky... I hope you’re not going to try to restrict the cargo of beer and crisps?”
Col: “Good God no! Some things are non-negotiable.”
And so, towards the end of August, we found ourselves in the arrivals lounge at Helsinki Airport; Col swinging his holdall like a handbag and me staggering behind under the weight of my monstrous 80 litre dry-bag and luxury folding chair. Helsinki was nice, but we had wilderness to be in and early the following morning we were on the train to Heinavesi.
Finland, it would appear from the admittedly limited viewpoint of the top deck of a train (Finnish trains have two decks; they are also clean and punctual – it’s quite staggering), consists entirely of a vast forest punctuated by lakes. It bode well for our intended activity of paddling round lakes in a forest, but made for an extremely tedious railway journey which, if memory serves, lasted for fifteen days (Col insists it was more like five hours, but that doesn’t fit with my recollection at all).
We stayed overnight in Heinavesi, having arrived too late to set off that day. Our hotel was nice and clean, the staff friendly, the restaurant served tasty food and Col got chatted up by an utterly plastered woman of advanced maturity and admirable persistence. All in all, the perfect evening.
It took us most of the morning to sort out the canoe and supplies, although a significant proportion of this was getting fishing permits arranged. According to the guidebook, we needed no less than three separate permits if we wanted to go fishing. One would assume that these would be readily available at the local fishing shop, but no, the Finns take their fishing so seriously that they keep their permits in the bank. So we queued up with all the people cashing cheques and arranging mortgages and scored ourselves one fishing permit each. Apparently we were supposed to have another permit as well, but we couldn’t understand where the teller was saying we should buy it. We did try the petrol station and the off-licence, but they just looked at us as if we were crazy to want to buy a fishing permit anywhere other than a bank, so we gave up.
By lunchtime we had everything we needed for six days on the water and had loaded up the canoe. As we pushed the boat out onto the gently lapping waters of Lake Kermajavi, the sun was shining, the sky was blue and we had six days and hundreds of square miles of lakes and forest to explore. It was a great feeling.
The first day’s paddle was purposely a short one. Time to get used to the feel of the boat; work out roughly how far we could expect to paddle in a day; to decide where to store the camera, lunch and the other things we might want while out on the water. We were headed for an island just a few kilometres from our starting point on the far side of the lake. The map said it had an ‘official’ camping spot and we thought this would be a good place to start our adventure.
This part of Finland is simply a vast area containing millions of interconnected lakes and millions of acres of birch and pine forest. It is wonderfully unspoilt and incredibly wild. The silent passage of an open canoe through this ancient landscape is as serene an experience as can be imagined. In the week ahead we would travel through tight channels between broken cliffs, across wide lakes and on the sheltered waters amongst countless islands. And always, to our left and right, ahead of us and behind us, we would have the forest – endless, unbroken, wild and beautiful.
We arrived at our island in the late afternoon, with the baking summer sun still hot on our shoulders. The gentle breeze that had cooled our faces on the paddle over had died away and the water lay smooth and calm, with the cool clarity of a pool in a mountain stream. As Col would say, some things are non-negotiable and soon we were floating in the water in our board-shorts and life-jackets, supping our first cold beer in the wilderness.
The ‘official’ camping spot surpassed our expectations. Situated in a sheltered clearing amongst the trees, it even had a few facilities to make life more comfortable – a place for an open fire, a shed full of logs, and a long drop toilet. There were enough clear spaces to pitch perhaps three or four tents, but we had the place entirely to ourselves.
At sunset we did some fishing with the lures we’d bought at the fishing shop in Heinavesi. It wasn’t long before I had a perch wriggling and writhing on my line and he was soon reeled in and released. He was lucky that I was unaware that perch are edible, or he might have found himself in a sandwich. It was getting dark and I was just packing up my gear, when Col shouted over, indicating that he’d caught something.
“Uaargh!” He said, not quite managing to retain his composure.
“Ooh! Have you got something?” I asked.
“UUAAARGH!” He repeated, indicating that he had caught something rather more impressive than my 6 inch perch. Running over I saw his rod bent in tight curve, pointing like a twitching finger at the dark water of the lake. Col was playing something very large indeed. Unfortunately, neither Col or myself are experienced fishermen and we were at a loss to know what to do. We had only the most basic of equipment with us; just travel rods, reels and a few spinners – and we had no landing net.
Whatever it was, it was big and strong but was fighting a slow, heavy fight, completely unlike the wriggling of the perch or the vigorous thrashing of the trout I’d caught in Loch Awe earlier in the summer. I tried to see what kind of fish it was, but the dark shape remained resolutely below the surface, pulling relentlessly on the line and keeping its identity anonymous. It seemed to tire quite quickly, however, and within ten minutes Col was reeling it slowly in.
As he dragged the fish ashore, it suddenly exploded in a new burst of energy – a final attempt to regain its freedom - and began to thrash violently across the rocks. It was a huge thing, easily the biggest fish I’d ever seen caught - and it was a pike, meaning it had a set of razor sharp teeth to contend with.
“UUAAARGH!” said Col one more time, skipping back to avoid the wildly snapping jaws. “What the hell do we do now?!”
I had to admit, I was momentarily stymied. The only fish I’d ever caught were small things with small teeth which seemed to know when they were beaten. Landing this monster was a completely different experience - dealing with it would be much more like picking on someone our own size. Fortunately, I had not only seen a few Ray Mears programmes in the last few months, I’d also caught one or two of Steve Irwin’s. I dropped to my knees, grabbed Moby Dick behind the gills and, using all my strength, managed to hold it still.
“Right.” I said, in the manner of the noble huntsman, “Bash its brains in with a rock!”
Col ran off along the beach and had soon returned with a boulder the size of a basket-ball.
“That should do the trick.” I gasped, between gritted teeth.
“Move your hands back!” said Col, “I don’t want to smash your fingers!”
“If I move my hands back the damn thing will have ‘em off at the elbow. Just be bloody careful!”
“Are you sure? I could get a smaller rock…”
The pike was twitching and snapping, straining at my grip. It’s thick, muscular body was covered with slime and threatened to slip from my grasp at any moment. In fact… was I imagining it… or was the vicious brute actually growling at me?
“For God’s sake! Just kill it, will you! I’m going to lose my grip any moment and if that happens it’ll probably grab me by the legs and pull me into the lake! Remember that bit in ‘Jaws’ where Quint gets dragged off the boat? It’ll be like that, only I will be screaming like a girl…”
WHACK!
A pause…
WHACK!
Another pause…
Whack-whack-whack-whack!
“I think it’s dead old chap.”
“Just making sure.”
“Looks smaller now its dead, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe its swim bladder has deflated.”
“Possibly. Anyway, let’s see what it tastes like.”
We had soon gutted it and carved off two long fillets of its white flesh. These we wrapped in foil with a bit of butter, before pushing them into the heart of our campfire. A little later, with a clear sky of stars visible through the branches of the surrounding trees, I sat by the warming embers of an open fire, sharing a bottle of malt whisky with an old friend and eating the fish he’d just caught. It was the perfect start to one of the best adventures of my life.
“Just making sure.”
“Looks smaller now its dead, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe its swim bladder has deflated.”
“Possibly. Anyway, let’s see what it tastes like.”
We had soon gutted it and carved off two long fillets of its white flesh. These we wrapped in foil with a bit of butter, before pushing them into the heart of our campfire. A little later, with a clear sky of stars visible through the branches of the surrounding trees, I sat by the warming embers of an open fire, sharing a bottle of malt whisky with an old friend and eating the fish he’d just caught. It was the perfect start to one of the best adventures of my life.
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