A couple of photos

A couple more photos - as usual I've back dated a few on the last weeks blogs. The first is of a nineteenth centuary windmill that we saw this morning and the second is one of those anthills we wrote about a few weeks ago - ick!

08/07/08 - It's my birthday!

This morning we woke bright and early. Start how you mean to go on I
say, so I cut up cucumber to put on my poor 31 year old eyes. I then
applied my new eye cream which scandalised Daniel by costing €15 (it
was half price). This, and wanting a shower every 4 days means Daniel
thinks I'm a high maintenance woman!

I've requested a bottle of wine for my birthday so somewhere on
today's To Do list is finding a beautifully named Alko which is a
Finnish government owned liquor store.

We started the day with breakfast, overlookimg the small marina where
we'd parked last night, then we checked out the town of Pietarsaari -
Jakobstad.
This part of the Finnish west coast is bilingual and everything is in
both Finnish and Swedish. Culturally it is known as parallelverige
(parallel Sweden) and the Swedes consider it to be populated by lost
brethren.

We stopped for gas and as there was a resident mechanic there, we
popped the hood to investigate a recent problem with the power
steering. Eagle eyed Daniel noted a crooked steering belt, further
investigation revealed a missing bolt and a cracked bracket. Easy
peasy to fix, €5 for the bolt, €5 for the mechanic's beer. We'll just
have to keep an eye on that bolt until a more permanent solution is
installed.

After a much delayed lunch and another snooze, we headed into the
forest for a 2 hour walk which started and ended at a beautiful sandy
beach. So now I have clean hair again; though Daniel was too chicken
to swim in the rain.

We then left the coast and went inland, changing our planned route via
the coastal Vaasa, and headed for Tampere.
We parked up for the night on a lake stopbank 10 mins east of
Seinajoki. As we eat dinner and enjoy Lindauer with strawberries we
can hear the drone of boats' engines as they zigzag on the lake,
trawling for fish.

I had a very nice birthday. Thank you for all my emails and texts:-) Unfortunately our phone does not seem to be working in Finland for those that tried to call.

06/07/08 - Feeling the wind and rain.

It felt a little like winter had come back to us today!! We'd
planned to hire cycles to explore this beautiful area, but instead we
went for a long walk after breakfast. We'd parked overnight at the
northern end of the island Hietasaari and so our walk was to the
southern end of the island. It was lovely despite the weather though
the lifeguard and icecream sellers looked a little redundant.
After a stock up food in Oulu, and an evaluation of how far we've
come, and how far we've got to go. We were headed south with the
knowledge that Pat's going to have to cover a few miles in the next 3
months if we are going to see everything we want to see.

An hour down the road by Liminka, we checked out another random 'point
of interest' stop. This one turned out to be a bird watching centre
that had numerous bird watching towers and huts scattered along the
coast to keep an eye on the thousands of migratory birds that hang out
here for parts of the year.

We took a walk to one of the huts, where it became apparent that this
time of year the birds are somewhere else in the world. Never mind,
we were able to entertain ourselves a little trying to figure out how
the crazy windows worked. We sussed it out!!

05/07/08 - Pat has a flat!!

A lazy lazy morning this morning meant we didn't actually move from
our parking spot in the forest until about midday, then after stopping
at Rovaniemi information centre to pick up a Finland road map, we have
now turned the corner, and are headed south.

Around 14:30 when our rumbling pukus told us it was time for lunch. We
stopped off at a rest area which also boasted a 'point of interest'.
This turned out to be the Ylimaa battle site from 7-9 Oct 1944. With
all the info boards in Finnish we couldn't work out much else though
we figured the Germans were on one side with either the Finns or the
Russians on the other. There is challenge for anyone interested -
find out about the Ylimaa battle and enlighten us - you could even be
published on the blog!!

We took the path through the Northern Finnish/Russian frontline,
across a swamp which must have been no-mans land and back along the
German line. Each line had a number of little dug outs just big
enough to fit one or two solders in. You could imagine them just
sitting in their little holes waiting for someone from the other side
to dare come out into the open of the swamp. We also found along our
path rusted old food cans, buckets etc.

We continued on our way towards the coast and Oulu, when deciding that
Pat seemed a bit sluggish we stopped off to give the tyres a quick
check, only to find one of the back dual wheel tyres completely flat!!
A quickish change with not too many dramas, thanks in part to tyre
changing rehearsals in the back yard (one out of your book Dad
Verry!), and we were back the road.

Oulu seems a delightful town with lots of cycle paths, bridges and a
dominant heavy metal element. There was a concert going on in the
middle of the main street that cost €28 to get into. Or like scores
of locals, you could just go round the block and sit directly behind
the stage for free and get the fill force of the rock music that I
think we were the only ones, who didn't know the words!!

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.

04/07/08 - Hangin out with Santa.

We made a quick exit from our ill-fated, mosquito invested camp spot
and headed east towards the border with Finland. This involved a
ferry crossing over a lake (free again, thank you Swedish government)
that we managed to miss by only a minute.

This meant the race was on. Will Marea be able to cook up a super,
hearty omlette for breakfast in less than half an hour!!! Of course
she could :-) Breakfast was served just was the ferry gates were
opening. The next race was could Daniel eat his omlette in the 7
minutes it took for the ferry to cross before he had to drive off.
Again, easy - done with a minute to spare!!

We arrived at Övertorneá, again found all our left over Swedish money,
including the 50 kroner in Marea's back pocket, spent it on gas and
headed over the bridge to Finland!!

We couldn't come all the way fand ignore the big red jolly fat man!!
So first stop in Finland was Santa Claus' official office in
Napapiiri. This is the place where all your letters to Santa go -
just on the Arctic circle. We were even lucky enough to go into
Santa's office and meet the man himself!! He was of course a very
nice man, but I did have to correct him and tell him he wouldn't visit
Tahiti before New Zealand when doing his Christmas rounds as Tahiti is
on the wrong side of the international dateline. He said he'll have
to check his Reindeer Navigation System. We also got to play with the
switches that make rain, thunder and lightning (if there were any 4th
of July thunder storms around the world at about 5.30 pm - you can
blame Marea!!).

Visiting the jolly fat man was just what the doctor ordered for these
poor sleep deprived travellers. Whilst we mostly keep good humor, lack
of sleep, persistent buzzing and itchy ankles can bring on some
temporary irrritable grumps. Usually food is a good tonic but visiting
Santa was heart lifting and fun too.

03/07/08 - Mosquito Misery

Sometimes driving is a bit like dodgems negotiating round the
reindeer. When we stopped and crossed back over the Arctic Circle we
saw two of them just wandering about.They are certainly king on the
road around here.
On one occasion a car up ahead had slowed right down and we spotted a
really large animal just ambling on the side of the road. We got quite
excited cause it might be a moose - but no, it just turned out to be 3
bikini clad girls walking single file in their hiking boots wearing
packs!?!? Only in Sweden? Daniel commented that perhaps they had
better insect repelent than we do.

Because boy could we have used it today. We went for walk at Hakkus
Fallet just south of Gällivare, where Daniel seemed to be on the
mosquitos' menu. At one point I even took off my jumper so that he
could wrap it around his neck and head, I was left in a singlet but
with my long hair acting like a 'tail' and 'flyscreen' they weren't
bothering me half as much as Daniel. Continual movement is the only
preventative option though we were able to take refuge in a
conveniently located hut for a while. Here someone had discarded a
well worn long sleeve shirt with a collar which Daniel 'borrowed' with
relief. One almost wishes for bad weather so that either, the wind
will discourage the critters, or that it is not uncomfortably hot to
cover up.

We were soon on the road again, it was such a beautiful still day but
the conditions so unpleasant that driving with the windows down
provided the only relief from the critters.

But it doesn't end there! We parked up with a beautiful view of a lake
and though we lit a fire, unlike previously this did not seem to
discourage them and, sometimes we stood in the smoke, just to hide
from them. The toasted marshmallows were yum though:-)

And it gets worse! Bedtime came and we risked cancer by spraying the
inside of the van with flyspray, but they just wouldn't die, or so it
seemed. Actually in the morning we discovered that I (Marea) probably
hadn't shut the cab door properly and I bet they were getting in
there. It was impossible to sleep with 100s of mosquitos buzzing
around. We killed as many as we could which is really gross because
now our blood and dead mossies are smeared everywhere. Eventually I
put earplugs in put the sheet over my head and managed to snatch an
hour or so of sleep. Poor Daniel probably got less.
We must go shopping me tinks, mosquito net, insect repellent etc....