Hello everyone
The drive south was such a contrast – we quickly lost the mountains and sea to be replaced by a much flatter landscape with undulating hills and long straight roads between the millions of pine and silver birch trees.
We initially hugged the Swedish/Finnish border so that we
had every opportunity to spend our remaining Swedish kroner before trekking
south-east to the Finnish lake area. We skirted the Finnish/Russian border for a
while just to see what the border crossing was like – armed at the roadside and
according to the noticeboard, a 3km wide strip between the two countries within
the forest areas.
The lake area is beautiful, particularly at Savonlinna; it
has a well preserved medieval castle which hosts the world-renowned opera
festival every year in July. We wild-camped here listening to live jazz from
the nearby bar – very chilled!
Helsinki is a lovely small capital city with 2 cathedrals –
one rather plain Lutheran white one, the other a Russian Orthodox with lots of glitz and
gold inside. The market square was busy at the harbour with its fruit and
vegetable and craft stalls. We timed our visit well as its festival time this weekend
with live bands – some more lively than others!
Tomorrow we are visiting the Suomenlinna Sea Fortress which
is the largest island fortress in the world; it’s rained all day today, so we’re
hoping for an improvement tomorrow. Then we sail to Tallinn in Estonia later in
the evening.
Will post again next week - love to all
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