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Published: August 10th 2008
Finland
Gareth driving to Jyvaskyla for the RallyHei
Well we just got back from an excursion to Scandinavia so we've got a few new photos to share with you all.
As some of you will know, I am a very keen motorsport fan, especially rallying. For years I have followed the WRC (World Rally Championship), although if I'm being honest, I've lost a little bit of interest in it in the last year or two. However for years I have dreamed of going to Rally Finland, the fastest, most famous, most popular and most spectacular rally, held in amongst the stunning scenery of the Lakes Region in Central Finland. So naturally when the time rolled round for this years rally I was there with bells on, dragging Emma along with me.
We took off from Heathrow on Thursday evening, landing in Helsinki around midnight. This being our first trip to a non-english speaking country we were slightly nervous about how we were going to handle communicating. We really needn't have worried. When we first got off the plane we were greeted by airline staff who were all speaking Finnish, as were the majority of the passengers. "This will be interesting" we thought. But as we
Finland
On the road, beautiful scenery made our way through the airport we noticed that most of the adverts and signage were in English so began to relax a little. Finland has now taken over the UK at the top of our 'easiest country to get into' list. We basically walked right on through, only being asked by the officer where we were going before he stamped our passports. In the airport we tracked down a hotel to stay in for the night and waited for a shuttle bus to pick us up. We jumped on the first one that turned up and after doing a full circuit of all of the airport hotels we ended up back at the terminal. Emma went to ask the driver if he was going past our hotel and his reply was all Finnish. In a very gruff tone (it must have been the end of a long day for him) he pointed to the door and indicated for us to get off the bus, our first communication break down. Eventually the right shuttle turned up and whisked us off to our hotel for good nights sleep.
We were back at the airport the next morning to pick up
Finland
Just one of the 190000 lakes in Finland. This road was a relatively quiet side road but then this huge bridge (on the left of the picture) popped up out of nowhere. our rental car, and were on the road to Jyvaskyla not long after 8:30am. Given that rally spectating involves alot of careful navigation to traverse between the various Special Stages, and we were in a foreign country with signs in a language that we didn't understand, we decided it would be a wise idea to include a navigation system in our rental car booking. Unfortunately all the nav systems the rental car place had were stuffed so we had to make do with a very average road map. Naturally, the first major intersection we came to and at which we had to make a left turn, we went right. I pride myself on my navigation and not getting lost but I could tell that I was going to struggle on this trip. Once we got pointed in the right direction we had the Hyandai Getz humming along at 130km/h (speed limit is 120km/h) on motorway out of Helsinki. After an hour or so on the motorway we pulled off to a smaller side road and made our way to the beginning or SS5. Unfortunately, due to a few more wrong turns we arrived at the stage late and had missed
Finland
Police in Finland. Saw a few around, but not as many as we expected with everyone (including Gaz) thinking they were world rally drivers the top cars, so we just watched a few of the other cars making there way to the stage start, then headed into Jyvaskyla and our camping ground beyond. It was at about this time the heavens really opened up and we were getting slightly nervous at the possibility of sleeping in our tiny, unweatherproof 20 pound tent in pissing down rain. An hour or so later and after even more wrong turns we arrived at our digs, in the bush about 45 mins out of Jyvaskyla. I didn't realise it until a few days later but the directions to the campsite that I printed off the internet took us right down the road that made up the last stage of the rally. And what a road it was. I wish I had videoed it for you to see. Its was considered the true 'jumping' stage of the rally due to its numerous high speed crests which were a hell of alot of fun (and scary) to drive over at 60km/h, let alone at the speed the rally guys drive it at. The camping ground wasn't the best, but it was right next to a lake and had a toilet
Jyvaskyla
Our little bitty car and our litle bitty tent. Note the nice forest back drop. and a shower so we were happy. Shortly after we had the tent up, it stopped raining so we made our way back into Jyvaskyla to check out the city and Rally HQ, and work out a route to the nearby Super Special Stage that night. The Super Special Stage was located at a the Killeri trotting track on the outskirts of Jyvaskyla and sees two cars at a time tackle a track side by side. Its mainly a PR exercise and doesn't mean alot in the overall scheme of things, but it was good fun to watch and got the Rally mad Finnish crowd going. After the Super Special Stage we headed back to our campsite and hit the sack.
It was reasonably warm when we went to bed but when we woke in the morning is was well cold with a heavy dew on the ground. We survived though. We had a 6:30am start in order to make our way to Special Stage 14 where the first car hit the stage at 8:30. Of course we promptly got lost, but there were enough cars heading out to watch that we just followed them. We got to the
Jyvaskyla
Building in Jyvaskyla. Typical of the buildings in Finland that have random signage all over them. Doesn't look so good. stage and parked up then had to walk about 1km to the side of the hill where we could watch the cars. It wasn't a particularly exciting corner to watch but there were about half a dozen spins to keep things interesting. After all the cars had passed through we headed back to the car and waited an hour or so for the start of SS18, a repeat of SS14. This time we walked up the road a bit further a found a better spot very close to the cars as they went by which made for a much better spectacle. After SS18 we headed back to Rally HQ in Jyvaskyla and watched the cars come in for the last 45min service of the day, before heading back to the campsite. At the campsite that night the camp owners were putting on a karaoke night and we were kept up to the early hours of the morning with really really bad, loud, off tune Finnish singing.
The next day the last stage of the rally was only about a 5min drive from our campsite but we still had to be up early in order to get a good spot.
Rally Headquarters
Very cool car on display. Icy! We got to the stage at about 8:30 with the stage not starting until 12. We found a spot right next to 3 jumps at the end of the stage and set up camp to wait for the cars. And it was well worth the wait. The crowd built up quite quickly so we were lucky to have such a good view of the cars as they flew (quite literally) from jump to jump. I think it was quite easily the best rally spectating I've ever had. While we were waiting we got talking to a really friendly middle age Finnish guy called Tapio who had a reasonable grasp of the english and a great sense of humour. Him and Emma found they both had a shared passion in Harry Potter and were able to sit and discuss there excitement about the pending release of the new movie etc. Very random!
After the rally we made our way back to Helsinki which seemed to take for ever. Just as we arrived at about 6pm the heavens opened up again, and thanks to some dodgy directions from the chick at the info desk at the airport, we trudged around downtown
Rally Headquarters
Subaru hospitality area. Rally legend Ari Vatanen is in one of the seats. Helsinki for an hour in the rain trying to find our Hostel, which we did eventually. We were pretty pooped so just grabbed some food and headed to bed.
The next day we headed into town and got on an open top hop-on/hop-off tour bus (bit of a tradition for us now) and saw all the touristy sites of Helsinki like the Lutheran Cathedral, the underground church, Parliament and the like. After the bus tour we wandered through the city looking at some of the more interesting streets and buildings and markets etc before heading back to the hostel for a beer and some reindeer and a rest before heading out for dinner. We went to a Finnish restaurant on the main drag and dined on traditional Finnish food and beer. Emma was determined that she was not going to eat reindeer as she feared she would be ruining Christmas for everyone by eating Santa's main mode of transport. But with the menu mainly consisting of reindeer and Salmon she didn’t have much choice, not being a fish eater and all.
The next day we were off to Suomenlinna Sveaborg, a group of connected islands about 15mins by
Rally Headquarters
Ford team repairing Latvalas damaged Focus after an off road excursion. ferry out of Helsinki and a protected UNESCO World Heritage Site. During Swedens rule of Finland, the Swedes constructed a sea fort on Suomenlinna in as a base for their forces and to defend Helsinki. The island consists of large fortress style defences around the outside and in the centre is a small settlement of about 800 people complete with school, museums, cafes, restaurants art galleries, stores, dry docks and an open prison. Thats right, an open prison. We wandered up to one corner of the island where there were fences surrounding a number of small buildings. The gate was open so we wandered up but stopped when we saw the DO NOT ENTER sign saying it was an open prison. Prisoners were walking around in side with the freedom to wander around the rest of the island as well. Weird. After we returned to the mainland we mulled around a little before making our way to the airport and back to rainy London and work the next day.
We had a great time in Finland and after six months in the UK it was great to be able to get away to continental Europe for the first time.
Rally Headquarters
Ari Vatanen, rally legend and Member of European Parliament. Finland was a very beautiful country. Central Finland is all trees and lakes (70% trees and over 180000 lakes) and it was awesome to get out amongst it to watch the rally. Jyvaskyla was a very nice city of about 85000, although with the rally in town it was positively humming with thousands of visitors all deck out in World Rally apparel. Helsinki was a beautiful city with mainly big old apartment blocks. It had more of an Eastern European feel to it than we were expecting, due to being part of Russia up until the Russian revolution in 1917. The Finnish people were a bit of a mixed bag with some being really dry and emotionless, not willing to open themselves up to strangers, but then there were others like our friend Tapio who were priceless. And they are all gorgeous blonde hair blue eyed folk, and so many of them wear glasses.
And as for things in London, well Emma is on school holidays for 6 weeks so is loving having the Olympics on at the moment to keep her occupied during the day. She was signed up to do some holiday work (childrens activities and that
Drink
All the damn drinks in Finland have a very annoying lid problem!!! It is impossible to rip the little seal thing off. Really irritating hence why we included a photo of it. sort of thing) but thats turned out to be a bit of a farce and hasn't actually eventuated in to anything, so money is pretty tight. Simon and I went out to Brands Hatch a couple of weekends ago to watch the World Touring Car Championships. We had a good day but the World Touring Cars were pretty disappointing, only doing two 14 lap races, much shorter than any of the other classes racing that day. The highlight of the day was the demonstration by the BMW F1 car. Its the first time I seen an F1 car in the flesh and they are very impressive. The sound is unbelievable. We've got tickets for the Belgian GP at Spa in a few weeks so it will be amazing to see a full field of them. Can't wait. We were also back at Twickenham a few weeks ago, this time for a concert. As I mentioned in the last blog Iron Maiden is one of my all time favourite bands and they had one of Emma's favourite bands, Avenged Sevenfold, opening up for them. The stadium wasn't quite as packed as the Foo Fighters show (only about 60000 compared to 90000
at Wembley) but it was still the biggest show Iron Maiden had ever played in the UK, and their only show in the UK this year. It was really, really good. They are classic 80s big hair rockers, now all in there 50s but as energetic and entertaining as ever. And sitting two rows directly in front of us was Blaze Bayley, the former lead singer of Iron Maiden for about five years in the 90s. I was well excited.
Anyway thats about it for now. We will blog again in a few weeks with details and photos of our trip to Belgium. Hope all is well with everyone
Kitos
Gaz and Emma
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shylah
non-member comment
well excited
''well excited''?!? How British :)