Distance Average Speed Max Speed 43.3 km 10.2 km/h 35.0 km/h There had been a lot of snow over night and more was forecast. As a result most trails were only partly open. I suggested to Timo that the best plan would be for me to head towards Saija. He wasn’t entirely sure but agreed to make a trail. First there was a short run to Janisvaara via some of the training trails and I dropped off a few items
2022 Trip – Day 5
Distance Average Speed Max Speed 29.6 km 14.2 km/h 26.1 km/h Got up at 0700 and found that the hut was a chilly but acceptable 11 deg C. After breakfast I was able to feed the dogs by adding hot water to the remains of last night’s food. I sent Timo a text to ask where I should be going and he replied that someone was out on a snowmobile making a route. A little while later two snowmobiles arrived
2022 Trip – Day 4
Distance Average Speed Max Speed 37.2 km 13.6 km/h 27 km/h There had been several cm of snow overnight and Timo had apparently gone outearly to make a fresh trail for me to follow. I left shortly after he returned at about 1100. The basic plan was to head up to Janisvaara first with a detour through the training loops then continue east across the swamps to the snow mobile trail. I would then turn south, cross Lohilampi and follow
2022 Trip – Day 3
Distance Average Speed Max Speed 43 km 14.2 km/h 33.2 km/h The “plan” was to drive up the snowmobile trail from Tilsa, across the Hameenvaara swamps and then proceed over to Kylkeinen to spend the night there. Mostly this was achieved! Timo had changed one dog from yesterday’s successful team but otherwise it looked good. With the alarm clock problem fixed I got off at a reasonable time but almost immediately stuck a problem. One of my team dogs, Muns,
2022 Trip – Day 2
Distance Average Speed Max Speed 49 km 15.9 km/h 26.9 km/h The day got off to a bad start! Last night I set my alarm clock to Finland time. Unfortunately, since it is radio controlled, some time during the night it set itself back to UK time so when it went off at 08:00, it was actually 10:00 in Finland! After a rather late breakfast I reviewed my maps with Timo. I say this every time I come, but I
2022 Trip – Day 1
The moral of today’s story is never to rely on a bus to get you to an airport! After a reasonable night at a Heathrow hotel I gathered outside the front door at 0820 for the once per hour bus to the terminals. With a last check-in time of 0930 and a travel time of about 15 minutes this seemed just fine. However, by 0855 there was still no sign of the bus and the small group gathered to wait
Camera repaired – Again!!
Regular readers will recall that back in early 2020 my Pentax K50 DSLR developed the dreaded “aperture block” fault and that I repaired it by replacing the faulty electromagnet with one purchased on eBay. Readers may also recall that sadly this was a short lived repair and that the problem returned a little over a year later. Investigating the issue online, I came across this extremely useful post. The first half explains how to replace the magnet, which I already
Replacing the front top mounts on the Fiesta
Another year and another MOT for my old Fiesta. As usual, it failed and this time the problem was the front offside top mount which was apparently badly worn. I also got an advisory for the other three together with both front springs. With the weather being cold I decided to buy the parts for both sides of the front suspension but only fit the failed offside for now. Since I would have to remove the springs in order to
Blasted Golf door lock
It is often assumed, by those who don’t engage in car maintenance, that fixing the engine must be the most difficult task. However, in my experience the areas which give the greatest difficulty are either parts of the suspension which – being exposed to the road – become badly rusted or, worse of all, doors! The people who design engines organise for the thing to be held together with a sensible sequence of bolts which can be clearly seen and