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.

Refurbished Tuusula Swimming Hall

The Tuusula swimming hall has been in renovations for a long time, a year? Now at the start of the summer 2026 it re-opened. Of course I had to visit!

Googling for it. And. yes, it did last for 14 months, as it started in April 2025 according to this article.

They repaired damages to the hall, and refurbished the saunas, washrooms, dressing rooms and the cafeteria. The hall is today in a very nice condition, it is pleasant to visit. Not that it was that bad earlier either, I didn't think there was major cause for concern. 

My previous visit here was here (alt. link).

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 of saunagoers are included in these blog articles.

Stevnsfort's massive cold war bunker

On my trip to Copenhagen to ski (see separate article, alt. link) I also wanted to go underground. Sadly, Danish caves are in short supply, only on a remote island Bornholm. However, there are bunkers... while my visit first was going badly, it turned out to be a spectacular success! Not only did I get an in-person tour of the bunker, but I also got visit a secret sea shore beach from the bunker's under-the-cliff exit, and also got to see small sea caves!

I wanted to visit the Cold War museum at Stevnsfort, about an hour's drive south from Copenhagen. At first the visit was about to go wrong, as their bunker visit was only open for tours, and the next tour would leave so late that I wouldn't be able to get back to the airport in time.

However, probably seeing my desperation, they managed to come up with a personal tour just for me, with a super expert guide Stein. Thank you! 

We walked first on the surface to look at radars, guns and the general layout of the bunker. There's 2 kilometers of tunnels underground. The facility was built starting from 1953 and extended and used until the 2000s.

The bunker was both an intelligence gathering station for tracking foreign adversary's ships and communications, but also a defense facility with large underground guns, ammunition depots, and personnel facilities. The different parts of the underground tunnel network were connected by a long tunnel which then branched off in a different directions for various functions.

One of the tunnel branches led to the sea, opening up a door right at the bottom of the massive cliff facing the sea. This area is by the way known for the layered chalk- and limestone and a tiny darker layer in between, indicating the soot and ash from the meteorite impact 66 million years ago that likely killed off the dinosaurs. 

As we exited to the sea front, there was a small pier and a gravel beach few meters in front of the cliff. At the bottom of the cliff there were several areas that seemed to have smaller cavities, further out maybe even larger caves. But I was unable to exit the small beach area as the beach was protected by the cliffs reaching out all the way to the water.

Right next to the bunker exit was one of the small cavities under the cliff. It formed a roof above the beach, about 5 meters deep and 13 meters wide, very low but at the highest point on the lip about 2.8 meters tall. Let's call this a small cave! Or maybe not, your call, but in Finland we would have been glad to have such a roof on a cliff. Anyway, I also scanned this possible cave with my lidar-enabled iPhone. You can see the form of the cave in the pictures below, there's also the 3D model, rotate-on-your-browser version, and a map schematic about the cave shape.

The museum office for the bunker and fort is at N 55.26460 E 12.40980. The main bunker entrance is at N 55.26436 E12.41554.

The cave is at N 55.263283 E 12.416556.

Museum:

Bunker:

Cave and the beach:

This article has also been published at Theurbanexplorer.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.