It was going to be a long walk ahead today, and I wanted to be carrying as little as possible. So I only took one lens per camera (wideangle with Sony and macro with Canon), no tripod and I even left an extra layer of clothes behind me. Which I came to regret quite soon, because the wind was horrendous and the sun didn’t show any signs of coming out. By lunchtime I was feeling miserable but the warm blueberry soup and sandwich did wonders and not so long after that, the sun finally broke out. And then it was just a beautiful and warm day and the wind was actually good, so it didn’t get too warm in the sun!

We walked all the way to the south of the island (the camp is in the northwest corner), and here I was finally seeing the kind of forest I had expected that the whole island would be covered with. Low and twisted pines, barely surviving in the sand and the wind, very photogenic (except of course now that the sun was out, there was too much contrast…).

And this is where the course ended, by the big oak (no pictures though). I’m saying ”the” oak because it’s marked on the map like that – ”Eken”. Can you imagine, a tree that is worthy of being named on the map? That’s how wonderful this island is!

From the oak, we were free to choose our way back to the camp. Most of the people followed the road but I wanted to spend some more time on the shore so I took the coastal path instead, and was treated to a close encounter with a sea eagle! It was soaring closer and closer to me, until it was right on top me with my macro lens pointed straight up. Of course, a 100mm macro doesn’t really allow for any closeups of flying birds so I needed to crop the pictures quite a lot, but if there’s one thing you can say about the macro as a bird lens, then it’s that it’s sharp!

Having done all this walking, my feet were seriously killing me. I didn’t have blisters (thankfully) and the feet didn’t really ache either, it’s just the soles of my feet… they felt tired and spent. Like I had somehow worn out the pads under the ball of the foot and the heel. And it seemed like the beach would just continue forever, I was getting quite desperate and needed to sit down and eat something and rest my poor feet. So as I was sitting there on the driftwood and looked around me, some 50m ahead I saw a sign, ”Camp site”. Oh well, one beach looks the very same as the next one so I didn’t realise how close I was already. 🙂

The sky was looking nice and as tired as my feet were, I forced myself to go out to the beach for the sunset on this last night on the island. I was glad I did!

Steps taken today: 42774. New record, beating the previous record from yesterday!