Day 267 Mon 9 Jul 2007 Porvoo to Kuopio, Finland

An early start to breakfast on the terrace overlooking a river and a field full of llama. Finnish breakfast consists of porridge, ham, cheese, herring and delicious dark rye bread with lashings of coffee and cranberry juice. Then its on the back-roads north to Verla, our next World Heritage site, a 19C/early 20C board and timber mill constructed at a point where the rapids interrupted the floating of logs downstream. Being Monday, the universal museum holiday, the mill is closed but we enjoy a picnic on the veranda of the mill-owner’s cottage, now a cafe which is closed.

Then it’s a rather roundabout route via Lappeenranta where we stop briefly to look at the annual sandcastle sculpture competition and Savonlinna where the medieval castle in the lake is the centre of the town’s month long opera festival. There’s not a room to be had within 50kms so we press on through endless forest to Kuopio in the northern Lake district where we find the Spa Hotel. On the lake shore with a large indoor spa and pool with waterslides, it’s a bit overrun by families. We forego the spa as sharing it with half of northern Europe doesn’t attract so we dine on pizza instead (reindeer of course, with blue cheese).