Day 5 - Katkasuvan to middle of nowhere (approx. 161km - 100 MILES!!!)

The group was divided last night whether or not we should leave early and avoid the angry farmer potential or stay and risk it. Mother Kinza had spoken so we stayed. I as always was up first (i defo should have used my nemo sleeping mat instead of the uncomfortable reindeer hyde for a matress) and made use of the lovely hole-in-the-ground toilet facility i found in another hut outside. I was expecting someone to come in our hut at any time as it was now mid morning. Eventually the others got up and we heard a man with a chainsaw outside and started to get a bit worried. We needn't have worried as there were a few people outside that had blatently seen us and didn't care. After packing the sleeping stuff up we walked over to the souvenir place (they also did a coffee and a doghnut for 0.50 cents!!!). We offered to give them some money for sleeping in our hut but they weren't bothered so we didn't have to pay. We of course had to have the coffeee/doghnut deal (they even had hot chocolate as a coffee alternative which I was very happy about). I also got a reindeer sandwich )tasted like salami). I then went and got another hot chocolate/doghnut before having a mooch around the souvenir shop. Some of us ended up getting stickers for the bikes. We then posed for some silly photos with a stuffed brown bear and giant cuddly reindeer before setting off at maybe 11 or 11.30am. The next town was only 30k away but involved another eating session (including me eating about 0.6 litres out of a 0.9 litre tub of ice cream and sharing the remainder with the others). The next bit of the ride involved a heavy downpour (luckily I was able to take shelter in an outbuilding for this) and a few lighter showers.I had the ipod/rave tunes going at this stage which helped morale in the wet. We stopped at a lovely spot by a lake a bit later and had more food (since depriving ourselves in Norway of the quantity/quality of food we would have liked due to extortionate Norweigan prices we were endulging). It was probably a few more hours to the next town which involved yet another supermarket eating session. I had a cider to try and give me a bit of a boost to cover the last 40k+ slog. It didn't help. Like yesterday evening it was another glorious end to the day with quality roads and weather. We seperated into 3 groups of 2 with Chris and Tom being the lead group. I was with Mark. The plan was to stop somewhere around the 150k to Tornio mark. Me and Mark approached this so started looking out for Tom and Chris expecting to see them setting up camp somewhere within sight of the side of the road soon. We passed the 150k to Tornio sign and rode for another few km - still no sign of them. We were both very fatigued at this point so decided we would get to the 100 mile mark and camp there regardless of whether we found them or not. There was still no sign of them after 100 miles so we opted to set up our tents in a grassy area within vision of the road. This was mosquito central and was a very unpleasant experience putting the tents up. The girls found us very shortly after. Kinza had spoken to Chris and Tom and they had pushed on a few more km's as wanted to try and reach the next town of Pello. This typical breakdown of communication caused friction in the group and we agreed that in future we would make it clearer where we would stop and stop more often to reunite as the full group. Anyway Chris and Tom came back to the mosquito field with us and we set up camp reunited before going to sleep. Highlights - 0.50 cent hot chocolate/doghnuts, silly photos at the souvenir shop, the several over endulgant supermarket eating sessions.