Bath Baths

Two spas, separated by one block and two thousand years. One you can't swim in because it is dangerous, and one you can swim in. If you are a guest at the hotel, that is.

First, let's go to Bath's (the city) Roman Baths, the ancient spa. This site dates back to year 60 or 70, when a temple was built here. Or should I say year 0060 or 0070? Anyway, there are natural hot water springs underneath, and those were greatly enjoyed over many centuries, indeed even today there are hot baths in Bath but the original Roman Baths are no longer used. The main pool is lined with lead, and in 1978 there was a death in the nearby Thermae Bath Spa due to bathers contracting bacteria Naegleria fowleri. Since then new bore holes have been drilled to Thermae and hotel spas to use clean water. The Roman Batths, however, do not look clean at all. 

Water comes from Mendip Hills, flowing down in the limestone ground to a depth of several kilometers, and through a fault, the water heated by geothermal heat comes up in Bath's spring.  (I visited the Mendip hills for some caves and skiing.)

The official site for tickets etc. is here; tickets for adults cost from 23 to 33 pounds depending on season and weekday; over a million visitors stop at the baths every year. Wikipedia has more information about the history and water quality here.

And then secondly, The Gainsborough Bath Spa is a hotel with an underground spa, right next to the Thermae Bath Spa mentioned earlier, and a block away from the Roman Baths. It is an upscale hotel, and spa is quite nice, though only included in the room price early in the morning and late in the evening, the rest of the time you have to pay extra. However, being on level -2 at the hotel (and while it has a glass roof to the outside, it feels kind of more like a hotel basement spa (which it is) than an authentic Bath experience. Still very nice though. 

There are three levels of hot bathing pools and one big main pool. Then there are steam, infrared, and normal saunas, an ice room, and plenty of space to hang out on beds on the pool level and on the terrace above. Very nice, indeed only a small number of people fit in hence the restrictions for the hotel guests to use it at earlier and later times.

Photos from the Roman Baths:

Photos from the hotel spa:

This article has also been published here. For more sauna and swimming stories, check out planetswimmer.com and saunablogger.cool websites! And of course the Planetcaver, and Planetskier blogs for other stories in Blogspot! The photos and text (c) 2026 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. The hotel spa pool photo in this article is from the spa's home page; all rights reserved by them.

Skiing, Caves, and Swimming on one trip

 

I managed a Mother's Day trip with a visit to see my mom, but also to ski a closed ski hill, hike to see a cave, and swim at a new swimming hall.

The skiing was at Porvoo's Kokonniemi ski resort, or "Porvoo Ski" as they now call it. It was closed for the summer, since a long time ago but there was quite a bit of snow left. Not all the way from the top, but several big patches. The one I skied was maybe 20 meters long.

It was funny that there was a sign "self-service" next to the slopes. Self-service indeed, walk up by myself, etc.

A few turns at least.

Photos:

Then I drove towards Kouvola, stopping at the Kolisevan Pirunpesä in Iitti. It is supposed to be two 10x long cracks, and I'm honestly not sure if I found the right place; I was running out of time so I could circle around the whole area, there was a cliff with the bottom, middle and top level. Coordinates were to the top, but there was around 20 meters of crack at the bottom of the cliff (near the houses by the road). Definitely under the rock, but didn't feel like a cave except at the end where one could go through an L shaped tunnel of maybe five meters. That part was nice!

Coordinates, as listed in the Suomen Luolat (caves of Finland) book:  N 60.76953 E 26.36751. Coordinates as I experienced them at the bottom of the cliff: N 60.769653 E 26.366905. I don't know, maybe I should go again to check the top of the cliff, even that's not where the caves usually are at.

Photos:

Finally, I ended up in one of the swimming halls of Kouvola, the one in Kuusankoski. It was quite ok, a 25 meter pool, a jacuzzi, and a kid's training pool. And a decommissioned outside pool. I guess that has happened in many places. Two saunas on both sides, or at least on the men's side. 

Not the fanciest building, kind of Kouvola style a bit. My son commented that it looks more rugged and grey than the cave :-) 

But overall a nice experience. Enjoyed the sauna and the swim!

More information about the swimming hall here.

Photos:

This article has also been published at Planetcaver.net here. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net, sauna and swimming stories from planetswimmer.com and saunablogger.cool, or all blog articles from Blogspot. Photos and text (c) 2026 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. The pool photo in this article is from the Kouvola home page; all rights reserved by the city.

Caving association introduction session

The caving association organized an introduction session to caving, how people got started with it, etc.

Taina Talvitie and Tuomas Ilomäki were the presenters that talked about their experiences.

I spoke there as well. My presentation (in Finnish) is online here. And the example 3D model fly-through video I used somewhere in the slides is available separately here.

This article has also been published at Planetcaver.net here. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot. Photos and text (c) 2026 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. 

Three-cave trip to Nuuksio

I was basically tossing a coin to decide what to do, had been cooked up inside for a long time. I started with the half-a-year-late raking duty on the yard :-) but then decided to not go for a swim or a trespassing at a closed ski resort, but rather hike in Nuuksio, and maybe see some caves. 

It turned out to be a great choice. I wanted to at least see one cave, and if I had time maybe another one. Found the first one, a small shelter cave. But the second was misplaced in the association's database, and there was no cave. But as a bonus I walked by two other nice shelter caves, and these weren't even listed in our database. 

(Of course they were otherwise known, Nuuksio is a very popular hiking place.)

The caves were:

Suolikkaan luola, the cave of the Suolikas lake. The name of the lake could be translated roughly as "rich with intestines", which I guess might refer to the twisted and curvy shape of the lake. The coordinates are N 60.323789 E 24.578457. More information from the Suomen Luolat (the Caves of Finland) book by Kesäläinen, Kejonen, Kielosto, Salonen, and Lahti. 2015 (published by Salakirjat, ISBN 978-952-5774-80-1). I was unable to find online articles about this cave.

Photos:

I scanned the cave, and made a 3D model and a map out of it. Above is a vertical cut of the cave from the map, for instance. The model can be downloaded here, rotated on your browser here, and the high-resolution PDF map is here.

Saarijärven lippaluola, the shelter cave of Saarijärvi (the name of the lake is "island lake"). The coordinates are N 60.332567 E 24.582320. I was unable to find any information about this from books or online. But clearly a place that has been visited many times judging from the paths to it, etc. It is quite close to the road as well, easily visited. (The rest of my trip was maybe 6-7 kilometers, and given Nuuksio's geology, it is a lot of ups and downs -- my phone counted 29 floors of climbing.)

Photos:

This cave was also scanned. The model can be downloaded here, rotated on your browser here, and the high-resolution PDF map is here.

Pöksynhaaran lippaluola, the shelter cave of the crotch of the panties. Again, Pöksynhaara is the name of the lake. And again, its shape does look like panties. The coordinates are N 60.320350 E 24.580955. This cave isn't widely published, but frequently visited based on the fire pit etc. on the site. And marked as a cave in Open Street Map. More information here. 

Photos:

Again, the cave was scanned. The model can be downloaded here, rotated on your browser here, and the high-resolution PDF map is here.

Much recommended tour! Combine it with swims, or even a camping in the woods! Nuuksio rocks.

Another photo of the views:

This article has also been published at Planetcaver.net here. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot. Photos and text (c) 2026 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. 

Linear Park Tunnels

Bath. The Linear Park is a biking and pedestrian path or park in the outskirts of the city, built on an abandoned railway line and tunnels. There are two tunnels, the first one being shorter and the second one longer, together more than two kilometers long.

The Linear Park is a part of the Two Tunnels Greenway, more information in Wikipedia. There are two tunnels, the Devonshire Tunnel (409 m) and the Combe Down Tunnel (1672 m). 

It is a very nice walk. Very green, of course for me interesting to get to be underground for some bits. And of course overall Bath is a wonderful city to go around in.

Be careful to walk on the left side though, as cyclists may move fast, and the path is narrow.

The Devonshire Tunnel's easy entrance is at N 51.37044 W 2.368859. Note that you have to enter this from north side, there's an access path from the Bloomfield Open Space. Accessing directly from the coordinates from west or south is not possible, the park is a deep train track valley, even access from the paths like the one running between Chantry Mead Rd and Maple Grove isn't a way to access the linear park because you can't get down from the bridge crossing the linear park. 

The same issue is on the outside path between the two tunnels, for me it was difficult to get out of it, but I finally managed to climb down to Lyncombe Vale Road, but it was sketchily steep. In rain/wet season it may not be possible, or without good hiking boots. The issue is that here the line runs on the old train tracks, elevated and on high bridges, and the way down is steep and slippery on mud:

But you can of course always return back, or keep going through both tunnels.

See also my visit to the caves around the Cheddar Gorge and town: link (alt. link)

Pictures from the Linear Park and the Devonshire Tunnel:

Walk back to the city:

This article has also been published at Planetcaver.net here. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot. Photos and text (c) 2026 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. 

Too cheesy for my taste: Cheddar caves

I didn't have too much time after the visit to the ski slope (link, alt. link), so a proper a cave exploration was out of the question. I had found an easy(ish) wild cave that I could have visited, but instead I opted for visiting two show caves in Cheddar, at the foot of the Cheddar Gorge: Gough's Cave and Cox's cave. They are interesting caves, the former medium-sized and the latter small, but both have some beautiful cave forms. But ... Gough's was decorated with bright, illuminated-from-the-inside cartoon characters.

Here's an example, though this was perhaps the most nice one, the rest were more about the characters:

Another example:

And it wasn't one or few places here and there. It was the entire cave filled with these.

This was clearly done to cater for kids. Interesting lights and characters, but ... call me old-fashioned but maybe the kids would also have admired even the plain cave with awe. But maybe that's just my opinion. Also, admission was 25 pounds, which covered both caves but was in my opinion a bit steep.

And Cox's was not, but they still used colorful projections and lights to lit up the cave. Of course this was interesting and pretty. Alongside the visuals  they also had a guide-less guide voice that made you listen a story about different parts of the cave and then made you move to the next station. Again maybe the cave could have shown and spoken itself, without needing an automated megaphone and beams of light?

Also, both caves but particularly Cox's suffered from overexposure of the cave to light, there plants and moss growing there left and right.

Anyway, I'm still very happy I visited these caves. I'm always happy visiting any cave, and these two were actually an interesting experience, and of course were nice cave by themselves too.

The Cheddar Gorge (which I didn't explore further) and the town also seemed super nice. I would have wanted to sit in this cafe between the two caves for a bit, for instance:

Gough's cave is 3405 meters long, and at N 51.281997 W 2.765617. More information here and here.

Cox's cave is a 100 meters long cave, and at N 51.281727 W 2.768899. More information here and here.

Photos from Gough's were everything before the above cafe pictures, and then these:

They were also aging Cheddar in the cave:

Entrance:

Photos from Cox's:

Entrance:

This article has also been published at Planetcaver.net here. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot. Photos and text (c) 2026 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.