Hiking into the Finnish wilds

Two years after the glorious ride to North Cape, it was time to come back again to our beloved Scandinavia! This time, we decided for a 3 weeks travel to Finland by car. This was another one exceptionally cool journey which I have great memories of. We left from Milan and we passed again through Switzerland and Germany, then we headed to Sweden, Stockholm and finally Finland. Like a compass do, we pointed the wheels of our car North and we easily reached in a few days the Finnish side of Lapland. Once there, we putted on our shoulders the backpacks and we entered the Oulanka National Park, an amazing wilderness area on the Finnish Arctic Circle, near the Russian border, for a couple of days hike. Our plan was to follow the wild "Bear Trail" (so called 'cause of the many bears living there...) and to do that we brought with us our tent, sleeping bags and all the other stuffs indispensable to be self-sufficient. It's useless to say the backpacks were truly heavy, but the beauty of that region was enough not to feel us the toil... I've still clear in my mind - it seems as I was there yesterday - the images of those rivers, lakes, hills and all the majestic landscapes we've seen... The total distance of the hike was approximately 60 km and we covered it in two beautiful days. After that "wilderness experience" we had other great times during the journey, we spent four days in Saint Petersburg (Russia) and a couple of days in Tallin (Estonia) before coming back to Milan. At home, I wrote an article on our Finnish hike (which was published on the magazine "Drakkar") and, even if all the tour we've done has been great, I still consider our stroll into the wilds as the main highlight... What else to say? See you soon Finland!!!