Today's newspaper had a story about the difficulties of the Stockmann department stories. Will they make it? However, in 1920 an even greater tragedy hit the Stockmann family and left the family house in ruins. The ruins are nearby in Kauniainen, so the day felt like a good day to visit them again.
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September 2017, Stockmannin rauniot, Kauniainen, Finland
Urban-Exploration (Buildings, Ruins)
Since my foot didn't like the walk I did few days ago, an obvious thing to do was to go try more quarries, and this time climb a fence. Without noticing that the fence would have ended if we had walked 10 meters further.
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September 2017, Laaksolahden kalkkikivilouhos, Espoo, Finland
Urban-Exploration (Quarries)
Today we visited the ruins of a gazebo in Laaksolahti (Dalsvik). The gazebo, or pavilion belonged to the Dalsvik Mansion. If all this sounds funny, in Finnish place was called "Laaksolahden kartanon huvimaja".
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September 2017, Laaksolahden kartanon huvimajan rauniot, Espoo, Finland
Urban-Exploration (Ruins)
There's supposed to be an old quarry in Juvanmalmi. But I kept going up and down near the coordinates, but found nothing. Wrong coordinates? As the darkness came, I did manage however to put my painful foot to a hole in the ground, have it get twisted, and stuck.
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September 2017, Österbackenin päälouhos, Vantaa, Finland; Österbackenin mahdollinen historiallinen louhos, Vantaa, Finland
Urban-Exploration (Quarries)
In better daylight and with Jarmo's help we now found the quarry. I must have walked 20 meters from the quarry wall (a 10+ meter drop, btw) yesterday.
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September 2017, Österbackenin päälouhos, Vantaa, Finland; Juvanmalmin louhos, Espoo, Finland; Juvanmalmin tuhottu louhos, Espoo, Finland; Österbackenin mahdollinen historiallinen louhos, Vantaa, Finland
Urban-Exploration (Quarries); Caving (Man-Made)
A small announcement in the newspaper -- Mannerheim's bunker to open for visitors. Of course I had to go...
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August 2017, Tamminiemi, Helsinki, Finland
Caving (Man-Made); Urban-Exploration (Bunkers)
I was searching for a place to visit this Sunday... with pretty much the only requirement being that a teenager would be interested in going. We ended up going to Kasaberget in Kirkkonummi.
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June 2017, Abandoned warehouses, Strömsby, Kirkkonummi, Finland; Kasabergetin luola, Strömsby, Kirkkonummi, Finland
Caving (Rock, Rock-Granite, Morphology-Crack, Basic, Surveying); Urban-Exploration (Buildings, Ruins); History
Can you drive by something for 20 years, and not be aware of the wonders just few meters from the road? You can. I had not heard about the Bemböle watermill ruins.
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June 2017, Bembölen vanha mylly, Espoo, Finland
Urban-Exploration (Ruins); Caving (Man-Made)
Dead cats were blended into margarine and fed to humans. We're going to a secret, abandoned tunnel to meet the ghosts of the cats. But it won't be easy to get there.
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April 2017, Undisclosed Finnish location, Finland
Urban-Exploration (Tunnels); Caving (Man-Made)
Today's evening excursion was to an abandoned railroad tunnel. The tunnel is 600 meters long, and in the middle of everything, at a place I've been many times, but I had never heard about the tunnel before.
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April 2017, Undisclosed location, Helsinki, Finland
Urban-Exploration (Tunnels); Caving (Man-Made)
Lazy Saturday, and all nearby caves have already been visited! Janne and I decided to visit a rock painting in the lake shores of the Hvitträsk lake in Kirkkonummi.
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November 2016, Hvitträsk cliff, Kirkkonummi, Finland
History; Hiking; Urban-Exploration (Historic-Sites)
This lazy Saturday's program for me and Janne was to visit some of the bunkers and moats around Helsinki's WWI defence structures. There are plenty of these structures, sadly all slowly rotting away. Historic sites, officially almost forgotten and certainly not cared for.
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September 2016, Pirkkola, Helsinki, Finland
Caving (Man-Made); Urban-Exploration (Bunkers)
When skiing or hiking at a new place, suitable maps are essential. These maps can be hard to come by, however, and most GPS maps do not contain information about walking paths, ski slopes or lifts. OpenStreetMap, however, has a lot of good information, and I have been using it in off-piste skiing, finding ski areas, and hiking around the world.
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August 2015, Los Arenales, Araucania, Chile
Skiing (Outdoor, Snow, Lifts); Climbing (Mountain); Urban-Exploration (Ski-Lifts)
A blown-up bunker. Debris. Darkness. Bats. Concrete rising to the heights. Walls hanging where they should not be. An ideal climbing place, if it wasn't for the grim past of this place and the morbid pictures of soldiers.
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June 2015, Humboldthain Flaktürme, Berlin, Germany
Climbing (Wall); Caving (Man-Made); Urban-Exploration (Bunkers)
Have ice axe. Will travel to London to go ice climbing. My cab driver thinks that is the weirdest thing he has heard his customers do. I think that if it is true, then his rides have been pretty boring.
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May 2015, Vertical Chill, London, United Kingdom
Climbing (Ice); Urban-Exploration (Buildings)
Avalanche pack, check. Skis, check. Mule, check. I am sitting on a mule, on my way to the ski slopes in Oukaïmeden in the Atlas mountains of Morocco.
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February 2015, Oukaïmeden, Morocco
Skiing (Outdoor, Snow, Lifts); Climbing (Mountain); Urban-Exploration (Ski-Lifts, Buildings)