Last week was the winter break - the single holiday week in the middle of winter. We went to Tottijärvi - the summer cottage, although I guess it’s a winter cottage. We stayed in Esko’s cottage.

We had a fabulous week. It’s a beautiful place and so much fun in wintertime. Most days I snowshoed out to the little island that we row to in summertime. It’s about 900m out, and about 600sqm. I felt like such an explorer, striding across the frozen icepack, when I noticed that there were cars parked nearby with people ice fishing, and then I crossed a roadway on the ice. I had to look both ways. Not exactly Roald Amundsen.

Well, I’ve always wanted to drive on the lake, so Felix and I set off. We found our way onto the ice road and then wandered off to do a some tentative circle work. Our car handles the snow and ice pretty well, you have to turn off stability control if you want to lose the back end. We called out to Coco and she came running across the ice to us. It’s freaky being out on ice that you were boating on recently.






The road across the ice is actually a really good short cut to Nokia (the nearest township). Driving on the ice freaks our GPS out - you appear in the middle of the blue and it keeps making gentle suggestions about taking the next left. It does so in Darth Vader’s voice though, of course. The boys picked that one.



I’ve also been keen to try ice fishing. We bought some gear and gave it a go. Here is a quiz for our Australian readers:

Fishing in Finland is very different to fishing in Australia. As an example, look at the following fishing action shot and point out the primary difference to Aussie-style fishing:




Answers which are correct but not what I am looking for:

- The fishing rod is incredibly small
- I am out on the water without a boat
- I parked my car on the wet side of the boat shed
- I plugged my car in to 240v
- I can be easily observed/disturbed by the rest of my family
- I don't have a stubby holder (close)
- I'm not wearing sunscreen (not obvious from photo)


Correct answer:

- I went fishing without an esky. 

I am not sure if anyone has ever gone fishing in Australia without one - doing so is considered a schoolboy error. Anyway, you can do so in Finland, although there is a risk your beer will ice up.

Some observations:

- I didn't catch anything.
- The ice is about 30cm thick.
- We bought the largest-size auger - 155mm. I guess fish don't get much fatter than that in winter.
- Drilling the hole takes about 20 seconds
- The whole rod/reel/line/jigging lure combination costs about 5€.
- Ice forms on your fishing line, and if you dip the rod into the hole to measure the ice thickness, then of course the whole thing freezes up. Schoolboy error.

I’d been reading up on how to make an igloo, hoping that there was tons of snow. There was plenty of snow, but not enough hard-packed stuff to make an igloo, so we built a kind of Hoth-base from the hard packed snow that had been ploughed away from the driveway.



And we just had a great time playing around on the lake.



The boys found a spare bit of ice on top of a rock near the island, and decided they were hungry.



Viivu did some Nordic skiing. Nordic skiing never made sense to me until I saw everyone doing it on the flat lakes.








There’s some vertical ice too, on the sides of the cuttings. Some people were climbing them one day.



It’s all very different to Australia.