Rauma, Turku & Hanko

I'll sum up a typical drive through Finland for you. Trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, lake, trees, trees, lake, lake, UNESCO world heritage site. Most of these so far have either been rocks or islands but this one is buildings we decided to take a look. Picture about 400 wooden houses in various states of decay not helped by a particularly dull day and you get the idea. Some are lived in, some are made to look like they're lived in, some are quirky art gallery's and shops etc. I understand why they are listed given their age but not particularly impressive or well marketed.

We spent two nights in Turku while the rain belted down and we made arrangements for another part of our trip, I'm not letting on what that is yet but once we've done it I'll post all about it! We spent a couple of hours in the dry walking around the town's cobbled streets mixed with modern buildings such as the town's library. Lots of wild camping opportunities here and many campers were taking advantage of them. Next blog post - Helsinki!

Conscious that Helsinki is now under 100 miles away and we don't need to be there until Friday/Saturday we sought out other places to spend some time and stumbled across a gem in Hanko. The town seem's to exist in it's own mini climate - it was pouring with rain all the way here and when we tried to leave we got 5 miles down the road it did the same. We turned around, came back and it's been dry and warm since! Weird. The town is a sort of seaside resort but being out of season it is relatively quiet and peaceful. There are some pleasant gardens which we walked seeing some of the fortifications from it's time as a Soviet Naval base. Tonight we sat out on the beach with some cheap tinnies from Lidl enjoying some sun with some rest bite from the presence of the vicious mosquito's we found inland.

Overnight Location GPS: (60.44279, 22.24986) - Turku - Long Parking Strip. Max 12 hours but plenty of opportunity to move around within the area - other side of river etc. Doesn't appear to be enforced - lots of campers stayed 24hrs+