Day 7 - Rest Day in Tornio

I woke up later than intended, so the morning run I intended on doing had gone out the window. We had breakfast later than intended (Juan had provided us with something to eat). After food the girls were hand-washing their clothes and hanging them up on a washing line outside (I had unravelled some cord from a flagpole making a washing line and used some pegs I had found in an old barn a few days ago). Me and the guys couldn't be bothered with this so decided to take the clothes into town and find a laundrette. So we took the bikes and dirty clothes and started the short cycle into town. Somehow we managed to lose Tom doing this and after a few phonecalls we agreed to meet him once we'd made it into town. The first stop was a cycle shop that Chris had googled before leaving so that he could sort out his wheel, and we found this easily. He showed them the wheel and after gesturing to the mechanics what he wanted done, he left the bike round the back for them to true the wheel. We went into the shop to have a look around whilst waiting. The shop also sold motorbikes so Chris was happy looking at these. I ended up getting a bike stand (I had found it annoying keep having to lie the bike down on the ground every time we stopped) along with a couple of extra spare spokes. Chris also got a few spare spokes. I fitted the stand in the shop, borrowing the shop tools. By this time Chris's bike was ready, he paid about 20€ for the repair (reasonable) and left. Chris and Mark pedalled off, I went to pedal but I had fitted the bike stand to close to the crank arm leaving me unable to pedal. Thankfully Mark noticed this straight away and I pushed the bike over to them and made the necessary adjustments. We then met Tom outside a pub close to the shopping mall. We each got a drink and ordered some food, sitting outside as it was a lovely day. We knew we would end up sacking off the laundrette after this. We stayed at the the pub for a while, each getting another drink. After this we popped over to the shopping mall - the main reason being to try and get a present for Juan for hosting us. After stretching Marks cable lock around everybody's bikes we went in. Maybe about 45 minutes later we came out with a large bottle of English whisky. After this me and Mark were pretty hungry so went over the road to a kebab restaurant to get a pizza each. This was pretty decent. It was still really nice outside so after the pizza we coasted over to the nearby river, found a nice patch of grass at the side and had a snooze. The girls came and joined us. They wanted to go to a Chinese restaurant that Juan had recommended so they headed off there and we went back to the pub for another drink. After our drink the Chinese restaurant sounded appealing so we phoned the girls and ended up meeting up with them in the restaurant. They both said the food was really good and Kinza's looked good so we ended up ordering a meal each. I polished off mine as well as Kinza's leftovers. We bumped into Juan (I'm not sure if this was a coincidence or not) when we were leaving and gave him the whisky (he was in his car and it was easier for him to carry it back than us). He said there would be another sauna session tonight which we were all well up for. On the way back we stopped at a massive supermarket to get food supplies for tomorrow. I could have spent an hour in there easily had it not been for the fact that we had about 10 minutes before closing. We rushed around grabbing the essentials before stuffing the food into our bags and making our way back to the house. After getting the bags organised for the morning we went for the sauna session, which was awesome again. I spent at least an hour in there having a few beers before going back to the annex, demolishing a packet of biscuits and fashioning an old plastic bottle into a speaker housing for my travel speaker. This allowed me to play music on the speaker whilst cycling, and after securing this to my handlebar bag with a few cable ties this worked well. We ended up going to bed far too late with a relatively early start planned for the morning.