So I was riding through Finland a few weeks ago, heading north for Nordkapp as I shall recount later; specifically I was pelting through the swamplands of northern Finland, a lovely area which I hope soon to revisit, and specifically I was on the E75 heading northwards out of Rovaniemi.
It is a lovely, fast, forested road, with reindeer and sundry other wildlife popping up from behind each tree and shrub; many miles from the city the road led over a slight rise, and cresting it seemed to streak brightly into the distance. In a matter of seconds I was through a gap in the trees, the sunlight burst in and this perfectly ordinary two-lane road suddenly, massively broadened into two kilometers of perfectly straight, perfectly flat runway – as wide as a 10-lane motorway, smooth, well-maintained.
I had heard the Swedes maintained some sections of their motorways as airstrips for use in times of war, and had driven on some of them either earlier in the holiday, or on previous visits to the country. Those that were shown to me by the Swedish natives seemed just to be particularly flat, particularly straight sections of dual-carriageway, easily wide enough for a fighter.
This, on the other hand, was:
- Finnish
- Wide enough for a 747 or something larger, perhaps even the Space Shuttle
(Can the Shuttle stop in 2000 meters?)
There was an awful temptation to crank up the speed a bit, but a sense of self-preservation suggested that other people might think exactly the same, thereby attracting policemen with radar guns and little else to do. I at least had the wit to twice punch the PAGE/MARK button on my Garmin, and thus got coordinates:
67n03.899 26e31.673
Which Google kindly fleshes-out into perfectly acceptable satellite photos – [detail] [context] – that show the object nicely.
I still wonder why the runway is there, though; it is unnecessarily large for fighters, there is not much visible in terms support logistics – the satellite photos show the cleared land around the north end of the runway but I didn’t see any hangars. The “feel” of the place was that it was meant for emergency-use-only. That I found this object just poking up from behind the trees, facing northeast and located eastwards from a point on the E75 not to far north of the runway, makes me wonder about Menwith-like intelligence connections to the area.
Has anyone any information regarding this remote runway?
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