MB Club Picnic Drive to Asikkala

Today was a perfect day. Sunny and calm, not too hot. I was invited to the M-B Club's main summer event, a picnic cruise in Asikkala, near Lahti. I left at about 10:30am, massively late, not least because I had to refuel before really getting underway.

In Kouvola, contrary to Google Maps' suggestion, I didn't take the highway to Lahti, electing to drive the 363 which runs north of the highway, through some tiny villages.

As it turns out, this was one of my better ideas of... the year. The road was simply mindblowing. It's one of those roads you can't really appreciate until you're there, thundering down a twisty hilly backroad where you can barely pass another vehicle. No one was there, except those who also drove it for the pure enjoyment of it. Every so often, a village came up, and they were buzzing with tourists and life. As you drive through the forests and fields, in the distance you could see the terrain was spotted with lakes and hills. Once in a while, you got the glimmer of the sun in the surrounding water.

Screaming down that road was one of those motoring moments that sink deep into your subconcious, never ever to wear off. It was spine-tingling, sweat-dripping, armhair-raising, perfection. It was brilliant.

In Asikkala, turnout was great, due to the sunny and so far dry weather. There was the usual assortment of sedans and coupes, new and old, 124 convertibles, 107 roadsters, a couple of really old cars, and a couple of really new cars also. One of those was a CLS 63 AMG driven by my good friend Kari.

Turnout was good enough that we could get nowhere near all the cars to fit in the yard!

In the schedule was an actual picnic at a nearby canal park. After that, a visit to an aviation museum a couple of km's away. All in all the actual meetup was over way too fast, it only went for about 3 or 4 hours.

As I was leaving I figured I was so early I might as well take my time. I again drove the country road and made three stops along the way. One was the UNESCO World Heritage site of the old Verla cardboard factory. To be honest I didn't think much of it. I can see the allure, it's a nice-looking countryside location with a nicely restored industrial complex from the 1800s. However, these days it was mostly a tourist trap with pins, stickers and pizza. Not really my thing.

A lot more interesting was this old... thing I found:

As you can see it's a canal lock, or today technically a dam. Except it has a giant lift above it. This makes it a wood lift; a device for transferring wood from the canal to industrial use nearby. The downstream side flowed into a cavern.

This was the most Half-Life 2 vibey place I had ever been to. Deep inside the bowels of the structure, on the cavern entrance it even had the little hut with a beat-up mattress inside:

The only thing missing was the .357 Magnum and a dude with a crab over his head.

Before getting off the 363, I just had to stop once more and snap a memento of it: