A Holiday in Finland
Ore wants for the holiday were many and varied, including being abroad without meeting too many other British tourists, to fine scenery, bathing, boating, fishing and good food. We were, however, one in our desire for good weather and freedom from boiled shirts and conventional amusements," and we found not only these, but also all our other requirements in Finland, the land of a thousand lakes. We started on a Tuesday evening from Hull on a boat of the Finnish line, and, passing through the Kid Canal into the Baltic Sea, reached Helsingfors on Sunday at noon.
For anyone with a fortnight's holiday, the sea trip and a few days at lielsingfors would be well worth doing, since the Finnish boats are comfortable; the food excellent, and the northern capital another Venice, where motor-boats are as much in evidence as cars. Within half an hour's run of Helsingfors are a number of islands—Bnindo is my favourite —with delightful bathing-places and restaurants, where a first-class dinner can be had for about 8s. 6d.
But having been content with that on our first visit, on our second we decided to go further afield, planning it trip which cost about 210 with the help of the Finnish State Travel Bureau in Helsingfors. which booked us passages by train, and on the lake steamers, which go where the railways have not yet reached, and reserved rooms at hotels.
Travel in Finland is leisurely, whichever means you choose. Trains have second-class sleepers for long distances, and, if you do take a first-class ticket, you still travel second, with a label "First Class" stuck on the door. There is a stop at nearly every station, and a general rush to the buffet for salmon-sandwiches, wild raspberries and sour cream breaks the monotony. Nor. has officialdom yet set its seal on the North, so that I travelled many miles one warm day sitting on the step of the train.
The boat service is even better, for the steamers glide over the still, silver lakes, in which are reflected the tall pine-trees which come down to the water's edge. Here a fish leaps, there a bird cries ; everywhere is sunshine and peace. The climate is sub-tropical. We passed many places at which we would have liked to stay longer. There was Punkaharju, a high ridge of land between two lakes, where the hotel was built in a clearance of the pine-forest. There was Nyslott, a tiny jewel of a town set on a lake—nearly all Finnish townsare, by the way ; Imatra with its cascade second only to Niagara ; Raucha which means "Peace," and does not belie its name, and the island of Valamo, hear the border of Russia, where the guest-house is a monastery.
But we did not linger, for our goal was Vaala in the north, the hest salmon-fishery in Europe.
Even here, forty miles from the nearest town Uleaborg, we did not stay at the hotel in the village, but in a fishing. encampment, Uutella, a couple of miles down the river. here there was a central wooden hut for the restaurant (we were called to table five times a day !) and around it were grouped the sleeping-huts, each complete with bed, rocking- chair, mosquito-nets and a Russian porcelain stove, which could be heated with wood in the evening if the weather turned wet or chilly. The fishermen kept us supplied with trout, grayling and salmon, the last, fresh or smoked, being about as frequent a dish as kippers are here. For those who did not fish there was bathing in the river or in the lake beyond Vaala, walking in the forests, and lazy hours in the meadows brilliant With flowers, beside the river. No visit to Finland would be complete without a Finnish bath. The bath-house, built a little way from the house, has a flat stone oven, and when this has been heated with wood, water is thrown on to it, thus filling the room with steam. The bather, when nearly par-boiled, is scrubbed by a servant, beaten with birch-twigs, and finally soused With cold water, unless he cares to fling himself into the ubiquitous lake. This bath is not a luxury for the rich, but a national weekly rite for the poorest peasant too. The bills at Uutella for food, light and lodging came to 4s. 6d. each a day. A fishing licence costs 10s. for the season, and a man with a boat is a matter of arrangement.
But, however much we enjoyed our stay at Uutella, the day and the way we left it, reached the high-water mark of our holiday. For we packed ourselves into a long red boat, the kind of thing in which the Norsemen came to Britain centuries ago, and with a man in the prow, another in the stern we shot the rapids of the wicked Vaala river down to Ulealiorg. Words cannot describe that thrill ; it must be experienced. A final word as to cost. The fare from Hull to Helsingfors 117 return, first class, is the only considerable item. But anyone willing to forgo the cushioned seats of a saloon fl get there and back tourist class for 1.10 in moderate comfort.
After that, everything is plentiful, cheap, and delightful. We've already been twice, but we're going again.
MURIEL MORGAN GIRRON.
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