Day 10: Saturday 22nd August
Waste dumped and fresh tank filled and we are ready to leave the campsite and head east.
A pleasant run on the 170 (avoiding the motorway) from the Helsinki campsite to Porvoo, the second oldest town in Finland. Porvoo looks like an overdone tourist spot in the advertising but it turns out to be delightful, not least because as we walk along the road by the river from our parking spot the local Bad Ass Brass Band, a scruffy, eccentric-looking group of musicians – but could they play jazz! – are parading along the road as they play. Everyone happy, appreciative and taking photos.
The old town of Porvoo is mostly timber-clad houses, especially sheds painted the distinctive red ochre of Scandinavia; lots of lovely buildings but some modest ones too (including a Sally Army charity shop!). Perhaps because it is Saturday (or this particular Saturday) there is an air of carnival, table-top sales going on at house entrances, flower sculpture at the church, and a stand with live music (promising a series of gigs).
On leaving Porvoo we are unable to use two different cards at Shell Express automatic pumps. It says ‘cards only’ – presumably Finnish cards only?
Then on the road again, this time via the E18 (with elk warning signs from time to time – there had been deer signs in the Baltic States). At around 5pm and not far from the Russian border we find a big rest stop where we decide to stay over, leaving any bureaucratic hold up entering Russia till the next morning. In the event this proved a wise decision.
The stop has a toilet block but it is dire, a brick hut divided into male and female sides but both exactly the same – empty bare brick rooms with a wooden platform and a hole in the seat and a smell from hell itself. The building is overlooked by a CCTV camera and as we are not sure whether overnight stops are permitted we move the van so it won’t appear on any remote monitoring screen. The downside of this would be that they wouldn’t be able to see us being robbed either!
We go over the maps of the run into Pete and try again to pin down where the campsite is but it is still not certain. As I have printed an aerial shot of it from Google Earth and there is something marked on the map (in the sea) we believe it will be impossible to miss.
At this point I realise we have driven a couple of thousand miles across northern Europe and not seen a single mountain. The scenery has been pleasant enough, with rivers, woods, lakes, Baltic coast, etc. but there has been no breathtaking vista, nothing even to stop the van for a photo. The realisation comes as a real surprise. The generally warm sunny weather has made it all much more pleasant than it would have appeared in cloud and rain, that’s for sure.
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