It was indeed a long week of heat (so nice to have cooler weather for a change).
Weirdest thing about everything is that we had winter just couple of weeks ago. Week before the heat wave we still had 30 to 40 centimetres of snow on the ground and all of a sudden it was +24 degrees and at first, even warmer than in the south.
We did enjoy the weather as much as we could
We did enjoy the weather as much as we could; hiking nearly every day, spending 12 to 17 hours outside a day, grilling, fishing, swimming (the water is NOT hot) and of course paddling.
As the heat came, in a week a lot happened, I got more tanned than I was last summer, last piles of snow melted, trees got leafs and the ice melted from the river and from the lakes making huge floods all over the place. At the ski resort the whole road up was broken down by the melting water from the mountain. Also Tornio river started flooding so much they had to call up to military to make dams so shopping centre and houses wouldn’t go under water.
I got pretty tired of hiking and hanging out in the woods with all the mosquitos and almost felt like there is nothing more to do around here, until! On the second last day of the heatwave we took the advantage from the floods as we had the idea to go paddling. Instead of heading to the mightily flowing river, we decided to go paddling on the flooding places, which meant forests, roads and somebody’s fields.
We rented our gear from Norrsken Lodge Camping. They offer two stand up paddle boards, two kayaks and canoe. So as we were four persons and one camera, we rented the kayaks and the canoe, so we could have easy access to camera (maybe more experienced kayaker would use camera as easily, but I didn’t want to risk flipping with kayak and camera). Two hours for 250 SEK per kayak and 250 SEK per canoe. Two hours was the perfect time for exploring the woods, roads and fields in a heat like that, if it would have been more we would have melted like ice and found ourselves from Tornio/Haparanda with a heatstroke.
To not melt like ice whilst paddling, prepare yourself with:
- Sunscreen (did not have)
- Water (did not have)
- Snacks (did not have)
- Hat (did not have, but put my shirt over my head)
- Sunglasses
Cheers,
Saara
1 Comment