The Blue Spring Beach

The Blue Spring Beach, or in Finnish, Sinilähteen Uimaranta is a nice, sandy beach in a pine peninsula by the Ruukinpohja part of lake Päijänne in Heinola. Conveniently reachable from the highway, I used it as a cleansing opportunity from the dirt and sweat gathered on my caving expedition (link, alt. link).

The coordinates are N 61.193121 E 25.983280. There's ample parking by the boat harbor just before the beach. There is no official page, but a bit more information here.

This article has also been published at Planetswimmer.com here. Read the full series of 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. No photos of swimmers or sauna goers are taken in these articles.

The Kommeli Caves or Kommelin Luolat

Kommelin luola or the cave of of Kommeli is a very interesting cave on a near the shores of Kallajärvi lake, just south of Mikkeli. For once, this is a Finnish cave that looks like a cave with a proper hole in the front of a cliff face, gets dark inside, and has some interesting crawling.

The cave has grown out of cracks in the gneiss (?) rock, I guess cracked pieces eventually fell out. Not sure why the cracking, weaker parts in the rock? In any case, the end result is a big black hole staring at you from the cliff face.

Inside the cave is largest just by the entrance hole, 4-5 meters wide and with plenty of height. The floor is on two levels, left is higher than right but you can walk upright on both sides. The left side ends, though, while the lower right side continues straight in. After a narrow tunnel you enter a second, small room. From there on you can crawl a bit forward, but the tunnel gets lower (around 75cm) and then ends. Here's the end:

However, there's a side tunnel to the left from the second room, I call this the side connection tunnel. If you crawl through that you can enter the third room which is maybe four meters long. It is oriented the in the same direction as the rest of the passages in the cave, from the map we can see that it almost touches the left side that ended soon after the entrance. That room is quite tight, though. But you can sit upright there and turn around. Side connection and the third room:

I made a made map by first taking a 3D model and then feeding that to the map-making program.

And you can rotate the 3D model on your browser by clicking on this link (wait a while for the model to load). If you want to download the model, it is here. 

From this map, and measuring distances in the 3D model I concluded that the cave length is 17.5 meters, not the 11 meters mentioned in other sources. If you start from the point where the roof starts above the lower/right path, the distance to the very end of the direct line ahead is 11.5 meters (and would be more if we started from the left where the roof is further out). Then the side connection tunnel  is about 2 meters, and the third room about 4 meters long.

A screenshot of the model is below, followed by the plan and cross-section views version of the map. A high-resolution full version of the map is in PDF format here.

Inside the cave is nice:

The cave is at coordinates N 61.647494 E 27.191433. Reportedly, there is another cave nearby, a boulder cave. I did not have time to look for it. There's a sign at the road where the path for the cave begins at N 61.653606 E 27.188483, and ample parking just on the other side of the highway underpass, park at N 61.654324 E 27.189139. The walk from the sign to the cave is about 800 meters.

More reading about Kommeli can be found from the Daphnion blog, Retkipaikka article, Länsi-Savo news article, and Aarteen etsintaa Salon seudulla blog.

More photos below, first the entrance and exit:

Cave from further away:

Path:

Author:

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.

Vis night swim

Prirovo beach is right next to the city center and port of Vis. It is next to the Hotel Issa beach as well, but the Issa beach is piers and rocks, while Prirovo is nice round pebbles. And the time I happened to be here was at night, with full moon rising from the other side of the Vis bay. Wonderful!

The coordinates for the beach are N 43.06334 E16.18879. More information here.

This article has also been published at Planetswimmer.com here. Read the full series of 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.

Skališkių and Čiobiškio caves in Lithuania

24 hours, and on a mission to ski on an indoor slope, have a spa visit, drive almost a full day between the sites, and ... visit two very interesting caves in Lithuania. Can I do it? Apparently it was just about possible, maybe half an hour to spare. 

The caves were both near Vilnius, one on the northeast side and the other on northwest side. Some hiking was involved but not too much. Both caves are eroding, one based on some kind of weak sand/stone conglomerate rock and the other on extremely weak sandstone, or maybe just densely packed sand. The latter is actually forbidden to be entered due to the instability of the material, and there are pieces of the roof fallen down, the sandpile is clearly eroding.

Both caves are also small, tunnels of at most tens of meters

The caves were:

Skališkių uola, in Liucionys. According to my measurements, the cave is 9 meters long; a 9 meters deep main tunnel, and the shelter cave width is 12 meters. The coordinates of the cave are N 54.875506 E 25.578087. 

I also scanned the cave, the 3D model can be downloaded here, rotated on your browser screen here, and the full map in high resolution PDF is here.

To drive to this place, leave your car on a parking lot in the nearest village's big villas, then walk the rest until you see the road turn slightly to the left and a tiny path lead to the right (2nd picture below).

Čiobiškio urvas, in Širvintos. According to my measurements, the cave is 11 meters long, with the main path being around 7 meters and then there's a side tunnel in the end that is about 4 meters. 

I scanned this cave as well. The 3D model can be downloaded here, rotated on your browser screen here, and the full map in high resolution PDF is here.

The coordinatres are N 54.966678 E 24.650342.

More Skališkių uola photos:

 

 

And more Čiobiškio urvas photos:

Čiobiškio urvas also has a small side cave -- I did not look inside, not sure if one can fit in:

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.

Viiala's Devil's Nest

Nirsinkankaan Pirunkellari, in Viiala (Devil's Nest in Viiala) is a boulder cave listed in "Suomen Luolat" (the book of Finnish caves, by Kesäläinen, Kejonen, Kielosto, Salonen, Lahti). As I was visiting Tampere and drove back home on the highway that is near the cave, I wanted to drop by and see what the cave is about. A nice one!

The book lists the cave as being six meters long, although my opinion is that the length is 9 meters, based on the 3D model and just the main passage. (But one could also have counted a bit more for the upper entrance passage, maybe even the side one but I'm not sure there was enough space to crawl through.)

The coordinates for the cave are N 61.197814 E 23.813694.

As I arrived, I realized there's no way to park next to cave as the cave sits near a highway intersection, but there's parking at a nearby dance pavilion (link).

The cave is a passage through a large pile of rocks in the middle of a small forest. There's two main entrances and the passage kind of drops lower as you go through. The exit view from one of the main entrances is above, the entrance view from the other is below:

There's a bit of a tight spot to drop into the bottom part from the main entrance in the above picture, but otherwise there's plenty of room to move around. Here's the squeeze part:

The entrances themselves are easy. In addition to the main passage there's a passage to the top where you can also exit, and to one side. Here's the top entrance:

Unlikely many other boulder caves in Finland, there's certainly a cave feeling to this place, it does get dark and tight. Very nice.

A bit more information about the cave can be found in Wikipedia and Retkipaikka.

I also scanned the cave with my newly bought (used) iPhone 14 Pro, which turned to be a much better machine for taking 3D scans than my old iPhone 12 Pro, maybe the sensor is a bit better but what helps most is the amount of memory. I was always running out of memory on the 12, now there's more. FWIW, I considered buying also a newer iPhone, but from model 15 or 16 onwards they've changed the sensor, but with a challenging tradeoff: more range (up to 10 meters from the previous 5), but with reduced accuracy. I will probably get one of those at some point as well, but it will need testing to see how well it works.

Anyway, here's the model I scanned in GLTF format. You can rotate it on your browser screen here. And then I run my Cave Outliner software to get a plan view map and some cross sections. That map is available in high resolution PDF here. Below you will find some snapshots of the model and the map.

Other 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, or all blog articles from Blogspot. Photos and text (c) 2026 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.