A Storm on Three Fronts

Day 66 - July 29th

As we didn’t get much of a look around town the day previous, we got our sight seeing in of Rauma the following morning. Being a UNESCO heritage listed site and renowned for its 800 plus wooden buildings it had some big shoes to fill against the wonderful (and also UNESCO listed) Norwegian town of Roros we left a couple of days earlier.

Being a Sunday morning, there wasn’t a great deal of shops open or people around, but we did get to have a pleasant stroll around town. Although it had a far greater number of wooden buildings than Roros, those that it did have were not kept in as good a condition and it wasn’t the most picturesque place so I think we both agreed that Roros won hands down. 

With Helsinki only about 150km away, we were pretty close but had some other coastal towns to visit along the way. After a bit more driving down the long, straight motorway we managed to head a little further towards the coast on smaller roads to get a look at how the locals lived and a bit more of the countryside and pine forests. 

Our turn in towards the coast was actually made so we could go on one of the only Finnish roads marked as ‘picturesque’ on our road map. After about 30 minutes of driving on it, we had to check and re-check that we were actually on the road as the scenery wasn’t all that scenic!

Despite not seeing anything greatly scenic on the road, we arrived into the seaside town of Naantali, which was once a holiday spot for the Russian aristocracy. 

Marina Naantali

Once Russian summer houses, now turned
 into cafe's and restaurants.

It was immediately obvious at the amount of money the Russians would have poured into the town in years gone by, as the once seaside mansions had been turned into thriving cafes and restaurants and the town was in a far better state than that of Rauma.

Naantali Marina.

Being a Sunday, the town was extremely busy with many Finnish people out for lunch and drinks on the water plus a local wedding. We took a ride around the town and out through the park on the waters edge, stopping at a café for an ice-cream, finally making our way back to the van as there wasn’t too much more to make us stick around for the night. 

Our next destination on our whistle stop tour of the western coast of Finland, was the oldest city in Finland – Turku. With approximately 179,000 residents it is also the third largest in Finland behind Helsinki and Tampere. 

Being a functioning port town, there wasn’t a great deal to see, however, we pulled the bikes out of the van and took a ride down the Aura river taking in all the boats that had been converted into restaurants and bars. 

The Aussie Boat Bar and Restaurant Turku.

Some great waterside architecture in Turku. 

To our surprise, there was an Aussie Bar and restaurant and we took a quick look inside to see what they were serving as far as food and beer. The food was a little disappointing (i.e. no meat pies or Parma’s), but the beer selection was quite good with much of the Coopers range, James Boags Premium and VB. 

Despite some nice waterside bars and cafes, Turku was a pretty busy city (something we’re growing a dislike to) and there wasn’t really a great lot keeping us in town so we again hit the road going further down the coast. 

Turku Cathedral.

The final stop that we had listed for the day was Hanko, which was another seaside town right on the southern end of Finland. The town was renowned for it’s fantastic beaches and some amazing wooden mansions that had been built by the Russian nobility back the late 19^th century for their summer holidays.

After driving through town, we took a look at the local tourist map and identified a potential wild campsite about 2km out of town on the water. Upon driving in there were a couple of signs with ‘Tents’ and a cross through them, so we convinced ourselves that you just weren’t allowed to camp in a tent there and motorhomes were okay so got settled in. 

Hanko Peninsula.

Claire doing a bit of Yoga with Cider.

We took a quick walk around the point and had a drink in the falling evening sun before heading back to the van for another BBQ. 

After watching a bit more of the Olympics that evening, our van decided to run out of sufficient power to watch any more TV so we made our way to bed. As we were about to tuck in, you could hear faint rumblings out to sea. Being close to a port and knowing there were a lot of ships that passed through, we dismissed the noise as nothing more than large cargo ships.

Our assumption about the noise being boats was quickly put to bed as we saw a number of flashes of lighting off in the distance and realised that it was a thunderstorm. 

Making nothing of it, we drifted off to sleep only to be woken about 30 minutes later with one of the biggest thunder and lightning storms we have ever seen. 

Despite all our blinds being closed in the van and it being pretty much pitch black inside, the van was illuminating with huge flashes of lightning. Knowing this was a storm on a larger scale than we were used to, we clambered out of bed and opened up the vans windows to see a lightning storm happening on three fronts.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get any footage of the event as we were so caught up in the moment, but it was literally three huge storms happening about 50km away from us and taking up our entire peripheral vision. 

The forks of lighting were so close and crisp it was scary. The storm had also got the attention of a lot of the locals as a number of cars came flying into the car park to get a better view of the storm from the point we were on and some were even brave enough to venture out of their cars to try and get a photo. 

As the lighting and thunder petered out, the rain started to teem down and the wind picked up, eventually getting to a point where they shook the van quite vigorously and it almost felt like we were in and oversized washing machine.

The only photo we managed to take during the storm.
Not that good but gives an idea of how the sky was being lit up.