17-Jun-2007 -- After yesterday's visit to 63°N 23°E and staying up most of the night to take part in the Jukola relay, we drove back towards Vaasa to return the rental car and fly home to Oslo, Norway. I had told my team mates about the project, so they said OK to take a small detour to visit this point which was just 1.6 km away from the E12 highway, just after the junction where we joined it from highway 16.

We drove about 1.3 km along Maunutantie road, until we got to the closest approach to the point. The remaining distance was 660 m, and the map I had downloaded from the Finland National Map Survey web site indicated that a track would lead about halfway to the point, out to a narrow neck in a long field.

When I got to the field, I found that it was split in two parts, above and below the end of the track, so I could get across without having to walk into the field itself.

From the field only 250 m remained, mostly across the (for Finland) very typical semi-open pine forest. The confluence itself was located on top of a little thicket, formed by a cluster of boulders, so I walked round it twice before determining that I had to climb into it to get to the zero point.

After taking the photographs, I tried to follow a moose path back towards the car, but even though it made for much easier running, it lead back to the field at a point about 300 m south of my original crossing, so I had to walk back north alongside the newly tilled farmland before I regained my original track and made it back to the car.

Total time on foot was about 22 minutes.

On the return trip Finnair was much nicer, and when we got to Oslo, we got our bags in less than 10 minutes!

PS. Our "Old Boys" team ended up in 240th place out of the 1370 7-man teams that started. This was close to the best we had hoped for, so we've already decided to start again next year!