Another early start for the gals, we made it to the club with our new found sport of speed walking. We looked at the thermometer to find a pleasant surprise of -24. A good hit for Bridge leaving India and Eve to watch, the referee decided to put bridge down for practise with her opponent, something that he has a tendency to do. We then headed back for breakfast as Bridge was due to be on for her match 2nd round. great result for Bridge, she won 6-0 6-2 against a muma of a Russian, solid performance. Once again we headed back to the hotel to check on Samm to find thankfully that he was feeling a lot better and had not been sick in a while.

Had lunch and chilled for a while then Eve decided to whip us into the pool for some swimming, relaxing, ice bathing and injury prevention. whilst Bridge and I were in the ice pool this finnish man comes in, i was standing outside of the pool in the cold winds and he jumped out and said to me (firstly in finnish) "roll in snow it good for muscles" and then he jumped and rolled in the snow, like a pig in poo, i then jumped up for the challenge and didn't quite roll in it as it would have sent me blue, well even more than i already was, but i still grabbed a dollop and rubbed it on my legs and stomach...burrrrr. Dinner soon came around and we all strolled up to the restaurant for yet another buffet bonanza. But this time is was not quite to our liking, salmon was on the menu which looked lovely but fighting with the bones proved all too stressful. Bring us back our sausage and mash! We all tried to force feed Samm some stodge to stop him impersonating a twig! Back to our room for a bit of internet and time for bed.

Toodle do Bridge & Indy x

 

Day 5:

 

Morning campers! Early morning call once again, off to the practise court pre breakfast. After a solid hit we went for the usual Breakfast choice of cereal, bread and apple juice, (note: no waffles). Headed back to the room for relaxation time and a bit of Finnish TV.

 

Back into the arctic to walk to the club, a 3min walk which seems like an expedition, with impressions on the way of how both of us walk when we are on court, in stitches as we were doing it. A standard lunch followed (sandwich) very adventurous yet all the budget could afford.  We headed on court for our doubles against some Russians, looking like a bear and mouse (bridge being the bear; of course)

 

We battled hard but came out 2^nd. We had things to work on and Eve threatened to pull out the human volley bullet machine back home, we better get our helmets on!  We showered and changed ready to back Samm in his doubles,  however we were later informed that they had pulled out so had a walkthrough. We took advantage of this and sneaked an early practise, score! Dinner turned out to be the quietest of nights. The banter levels dropped catastrophically (Bridge was suffering a light headache and held back the talk) we battled through the night and the odd scrape of knife on plate was the highlight of dinner.

 

Bridge gulped down some paracetemols and felt better. An early night was needed ahead of tomorrow’s events.

 

Lights out Bridge & Indy   

 

 

Day 6:

 

As usual another early start and, for Bridge, an early hit. Seen as I was out of the tournament, I decided I would have a bit of breakfast with Samm heading into the gym for a solid workout! Came back to the room, sweating like a racing horse, to find Bridge relaxing on the bed looking very chilled and prepared for her match! I was keen to have a shower however I came at the wrong time, the cleaners were in!

 

We then met Eve for a bit of lunch, Eve pushing herself by going for the coffee and cake option! Whilst Bridge and I ate a lot more. Time passed and we headed off to the club, again. Bridge was due to go on at 1pm.........ended up 3pm! Well warmed up she headed on against another Russian. The first set was nervy and was tit for tat but mistaken opportunities caused Bridges to lose the first set. Not having the best of days I found it hard to get into a rhythm causing Eve to give birth to ten kittens. I was very disappointed as I knew it was very winnable. After logically talking it through with Eve we made a deal, I will believe in myself more.

 

Sprits were raised by the thought of food and Samm making final of doubles, with his Belgium partner. Banter returned to the table and India finally managed to succeed at glass humming. After annoying the waiter and Eve reminding her of her dinner manners she decided to stop but still had a gleaming smile spread across her face due to her achievement, Eve saying that she needs that attitude on court! We returned to the room and popped on a horror film to help us sleep...

Game, set, and match Indy & Bridge!

 

Day 7:

 

Another half lie in led us to having breakfast at around 8:30. We headed to the gym to pump irons, whilst Samm and Eve went to the club to warm up Samm for his doubles later on. After our mahusive weights session we also headed to the club to wait for Samm to play his doubles final! After what’s seemed a long wait Samm was finally on, unfortunately his opponents where just too good and so he lost.

We decided to take the scenic way back to the hotel and take a walk on the sea! Eve took on the role of mum saying “be careful children don’t fall through the ice” much to the amusement of us! The walk took us to what, in the summer, is properly a look out tower for lifeguards with steps to the top covered in ice Samm struggled to the top mostly pulling himself up using the railings! On our way back, Eve insisted that we were having too much fun so she put a Jez Green aspect on things and got us squatting with ice blocks in our arms…Torture! You can see the pain we were in below!

 

After freezing our limbs off we got back to the hotel and once again did some fitness but this time in the pool, we did lengths and ice baths it was tiring but very different than are usual training!

It came to the last supper, Eve and her disciples it was a pizza for Samm and us, Eve, for the 6th time this week, dived in for the salad! We went to the room to finish watching Paranormal Activity, it was so scary we had to knock on Samm’s room and went to play on the Wii to take our mind off it before sleep time arose! 


Day 8:

Morning time, we more feel alive than ever as we are looking forward to sleeping in our own homes tonight, finally! Got into taxi and we were on our way to airport, when we arrived to the worlds smallest airport with around 15 people in it, we discovered that we couldn't check our bags in for another hour, but thankfully there was internet so we were all sat on a table with all four of our laptops out enjoying life! Check in time came at last and we watched our bags go off to the distance...

The first of many errors came, after we went through security Bridge need to borrow money from me to pay for an apple so I went into my bag to find that there was no purse... i was so shocked and didn't know what to do, i remember that i bought a sandwich before check in and must have left it there, Eve and I went to ask if we could go back through security and thank god some finish person had handed it in.

Plane just touched down and we thought maybe we should check with eve what time our connection flight, we then realised we had 15 minutes to get off this plane and board the next! Bridge and I lead the way sprinting through the many different cultures of people, we made it in the nick of time and were on the plane! The main thing that crossed our minds was our bags going to make it on our flight? When we landed we were told that three of our bags where in Finland still and somehow one of them made it onto our flight and should be coming on the conveyer belt, so we waited to see if one bag was going to come out and who's it was going to be... after at least an hour of waiting and filling in forms there was still no bag and the next flights bag was starting to come on we decided we would head off and get the airport to send it with the others another day.

The weirdest thing was getting on the bus to the car park without our bags, it felt like we had been robbed of all our belongings and were left empty handed.
so at the end of an eventful trip we were exhausted, stressed and worried about our bags! we've had illnesses, winning, loosing, good nights, bad nights, scary movies, swimming, workouts and annoying airports!

Until next time good bye from Indy & Bridge