31st Aug
2015
More trees – Then
lakes and another beautiful camping spot
A very short day
today – Only 110 kms – But we had a lot to do !
We woke up to a
clear blue sky and an early mist over the river that was unbelievable –
Unfortunately was too sleepy and cold to get my camera out, so you will just
have to take my word on that. A very
heavy dew had everything wet, including the tea towel left out to dry overnight
! But the warm sun soon appeared and dried everything out, and although the air
was still cold, if you stood in the sun, then it was nice and warm. It looked like being another good day.
We were almost
totally out of groceries this morning – Just had enough for breakfast, and that
was about it. So we knew we would have
to stop somewhere for a shop. Our dirty laundry bag was also somewhat larger
than our clean laundry bag, so we needed to stop early somewhere so we could do
some laundry and give it a reasonable chance to dry in the afternoon sunshine.
For about 2 hours
we drove down the road, and all we saw were trees – on both sides. I exaggerate a little, because occasionally
we had a break in the trees and there was a small field, usually with an old
wooden shed in the middle, and then it was back to the trees again. There were no hills (let alone mountains)
anywhere. Flat as Holland, it was – Or
maybe flatter !! We were discussing
this scenery, and decided this must be why Finland has excellent cross country
skiers – There are no mountains for them to learn to downhill ski on ! And why
they have such good ski-jumpers –
They build their own little hills and jump off them ! And also why Finland has some of the greatest
rally and F1 drivers – They grow up driving on the twisty trails in the
forests, of which there are plenty. They
certainly don’t learn to drive fast on the roads – Speed limit here is usually
80 kmh, occasionally 100, and then every single small junction on the main road
is 60 kms, and every single junction has a fixed speed camera to enforce it
! You have to concentrate really hard to
spot every speed camera – Not because I am speeding, but because you have to
keep speeding up then slowing down.
Sometimes it is tempting to just go a 60 kmh all the time so you never
get caught !
It really was all
rather boring. I do not mean to infer
that Finland is boring – I am sure there are many gorgeous places. But you have to get off the main roads to
find them. So Finland is not a good
place for a driving holiday, like Norway with its endless scenery, or even
England with its rolling hills. It may be a good place for a “destination”
holiday, but just not for a driving holiday !
In other places
we look for the small roads going down the coast, or through the mountains, and
tend to follow them. But down this coast
road of Finland there are very few small roads wandering down the coast – You
can go out to a place on a smaller road, then you have to come back on the same
road – Not much fun.
ANYWAY, when we
got to Kokkola we went into town to first of all look for a supermarket, and
secondly because we noticed that from Kokkola there was a loop of smaller road
out on the coast for a while, and we intended to explore it. So we got the shopping done – Excellent
supermarket. We met some people living
in Sweden the other day and they said Norwegian people cross over to Sweden to
do their shopping because it is so much cheaper, but Swedish people actually
cross over to Finland where possible not because it is cheaper, but because
there is apparently a much better range of goods, in supermarkets and in other
shops as well. And our supermarket today
certainly had a great range of foods.
Then we got onto
the smaller road out across a series of small islands towards Larsmo and Jakobstad. Instantly delightful scenery – The endless
trees along the side of the road were gone, and we crossed several bridges
across big inlets (its all Gulf of Bothnia here), and suddenly saw a little
spot by the water with an old wooden boat and boat shed. Perfect lunch spot ! So we drove down a cycle path (couldn’t see
how else to get there !) and parked at the edge of the water and enjoyed our
lunch in the sunshine – In a little town called Bosund.
While having
lunch, we checked on what camp sites were available nearby, and found two on
the next island of Larsmo. They were
only about a 15 minute drive away, so we checked one, but it was in the woods,
whereas the other was down on the water’s edge.
Wifi ? Yes sir. Showers included ? Yes sir.
Washing machines ? Yes sir. Perfect, we will take one night please. Pay the money on visa, and 5 minutes later
the man says “Sorry sir, the wifi is not working”. Well we already know that refunds on Visa
card aren’t done here (The fiasco with trying to buy a new iPhone cost me $100
in exchange rate losses !), so we had to grin and bear it. And that’s the kind of reason my blog is
sometimes not posted regularly !!
Anyway, apart
from the lack of wifi, we got a great spot down on the water’s edge, set up
camp and got the laundry on, and then had a relaxing afternoon doing a few
chores. I also need to look for a Toyota
dealer to do an oil change in the next few hundred k’s as I am now up to my 10,000
km limit, but other than that we can drift into Helsinki in the next day or so
and see what we can find there. There
are also some sights to be seen in places like Turk, apparently, so we are
looking forward to that.
And if we can
find any more little B roads around the coast like today’s, we shall certainly
be taking them !
No comments:
Post a Comment