About 50 clicks north from Tampere the ‘Manchester of Finland’ there lies a town, which by any other traveller through the Finnish country side would be disregarded as one of those forgettable towns. A place that is just on the way to somewhere else, I have been through many of these; Rikala, Poikelu, Syvälänkylä. Places that only get a look in thanks to maps and journal notes. Places that seemingly offer nothing.
Kuru was one of these places, seemingly lifeless and our arrival there had been anything but elegant, arriving on what was best described as a rubber band powered plane into Tampere airport, which unlike Manchester airport which we had left was populated seemingly by a single baggage handler. Feeling like Indiana Jones after our landing which my best guess and explanation is that the pilot shook the joystick out of boredom or simply just to see what would happen, we walked out through security and into the main terminal. We were met not by the person that we expecting but by a man who’s only word of english was ‘Cumbria’ as good a sign as any that this guy was expecting us, we loaded our gear into the trailer and climbed into the minibus.
The reason I had ended up in Finland stems from the desire from my University course lecturer to expand the Adventure & Media course and form links with a college in Finland. This particular college was the Kuru institute of Forestry, a college who is one of the 15 providers in Finland of the International Wilderness Guides programme. To become a international Wilderness take s a year of training a incredible depth of knowledge of Flora and Fauna and a vast base of practical skill. It would be these individuals that we would be joining in with during our time in Finland.
The first week of our trip was spent conducting our own expedition, collecting extra equipment such as knives axes and tarpaulins the from the International wilderness guide’s. Spending the next 4 days out in the Finnish Wilderness trekking through the Seitseminen National Park and eventually back to Kuru.
For the next two weeks we joined in with the International Students programme. Taking part in everything from entomology lectures to bird watching session out in the field.
More Stories to come…