Day 2 - To Kem

Day 2 - 28^th June.

We began the day with an 8.30 am breakfast and then a quick check of the feeders where we saw a Red Squirrel, Northern Bullfinch, Siskin, Yellowhammer, a male and juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker and a Pied Flycatcher in the nestbox.

After an hour's paperwork we set off for the border where we had nearly an  hour in security before calling in for a fuel stop and waiting in a service area for Dimitri, our Russian guide. He eventually turned up blaming the change of an hour, but this was a joke because this part of Kerelia has the same time as Finland. Wandering round the flowery edges we saw mazarine and silver-studded blue, everlasting flower, 2 x wintergreen, 2 x dragonflies. A further stop for money where we checked out common spotted orchids along the roadside verge and an emerald dragonfly.

Driving east we passed forests, boggy areas and placid lakes before a stop for a lunch break at River Nagiors with ham and salad sandwiches with tea and Ronttonen (mashed potato and lingonberry).

There were Black-headed/Common/Baltic gulls, goldeneye, common sandpipers, white wagtails and mallard on lake and river edges. We also found Moorland Clouded Yellow and more silver-studded Blues. The road was quite straight but quite bumpy, with rough surfaces. We stopped for more food at a roadside service area where we had tea with a meatball soup before setting off on the last leg. As we drove we had buzzard, fieldfare and redwing,

We had to stop at a railway crossing for a train that was over a mile long and glancing at the roadside we found early marsh orchid on the roadside which we stopped to check out before trying to catch Dimitri up.

We had a quick stop at a village shop and then carried on, arriving at about 9.0clock (10 to start with, due to time confusion) settled intp our hotel, which was a traditional wooden building with specisal Karelian carvings round the doors and windows.

We had a walk round and a quick look in the small church  built in about 2010 especially for travellers to the Solovetski islands, with merganser, gulls, common tern and oystercatcher before meeting up for dinner at 10.00 which was fried chicken with a rice/peas/corn/pepper salad and cucumber/tomatoes.