A beautiful summer Sunday (23 June 2019) – and what could be better than to get out on the water. This time we went to the archipelago just west of the Finnish capital Helsinki – Helsingfors. We took the tour boat from a suburban marina in Finno which brought us to the Pentala island in about an hour.
The island world just outside the Helsinki metropolitan region is quite fantastic and today it showed its most beautiful face.
The route was a bit nostalgic for me as this was where we used to head westward for weekend trips with my parents’ slow wooden cabin boat. Later, when I was about 14 or 15, we were allowed to go alone, with friends. Often we berthed for some days on one of the many uninhabited islands, most with superb red cliffs at the sea shore, smoothed by the ice age. The water was clear and the swimming great.
Later, with our own family, we had a small summer house a bit further west. Today we remembered the stormy weather and the agitated sea on the open stretches when we took our small cabin boat there for the first time. Our luck I guess was that it was a slow Norwegian dinghy kind of a boat, made to roll on top of the waves…
Today’s tour was of course different, like taking a bus but still right out there in the fresh air and clean nature. We wanted to see a new museum on the island, an old fisherman’s homestead. It is owned and managed by the municipality, with free entrance, and the boat trip there and back costs 6 Euros. If you are retired – age does not matter they said – you pay only 3 Euros, sponsored by our next door neighbours in the Espoo – Esbo municipality.
