07/07/08 - Walking the historic streets of Kokkola.

Gossip Mirrors The Kokkola Shipping Strait

Today we woke late, partly due to the overcast weather but probably because we sat up half the night watching Bro town, ow.

Went to Kokkola and stocked up on reading material from the information centre. We took a self guided tour around Nerista which is the old wooden part of town now populated by the hip and trendy artisan community. To get there, we crossed a small stream. Large fishing fleets used to sail up here when it was the town's harbour, and one ship is now 'marooned' in the town square. This small stream is all that is left due to the rising land. This part of Finland has the same rate of land uplift (8mm/year) as the high coast area in Sweden, and over 100's of years this has caused changes in traditional landuse.
We came across a display of a captured English landing boat from the 1854 Crimean war. The poor Finnish Duchy of Russia were rather caught in the middle, and apparently the spirited show of defense from Kokkola took the English a bit by surprise. Also adorning some houses in the old streets of Kokkola were 'gossip mirrors' - these are strategically placed, so that from the comfort of your own arm chair you could keep an eye on everyone who is walking down the street!!

Using our newly purchased map showing walks in the area, we went on a tikitour through the back roads, across some islands into the seven bridges archipelago area. We were halted by some construction where a bridge was supposed to be, expecting that we would have to turn around and go back the way we came, we sat down for some lunch hoping that if we waited an hour the bridge might be finished. And whadda ya know? Actually it was a temporary causeway, but it did the trick.

After more tiki touring mostly on dirt roads, Grandpa Daniel had a snooze, which was brilliant because in that time, our overcast day blew away and the sun came out. We then went for a 2.5 hour walk mainly in what could pass for an enormous Japanese garden. Much like the High Coast Area in Sweden, there are rocks, moss and old knarled bonsai like trees; the sea and swamps/lakes being impressive water features.