the final long drive

well we have made it to helsinki!!! and back enroute with the other rally-ers!

yesterday morning it was yet another early start as we had about an 11 hour drive ahead of us!

We managed to get up in time for breakfast at the hotel in Lulea before heading off.

Ellis & Megs had stayed up drinking (again) so they had had a really late one! 5 minutes into the car and they were out of it!!!

I also fell asleep so malcolm was having to drive with everyone out cold!

It didnt take long to get to the Finland border, which was exciting! but the drive through Finland was pretty dull! All you could see either side of the road was trees, and the weather was pretty dull!!!

I suppose you could go as far as saying some people got cabin fever and started making up the most inventive stories about who owned finland and the puppet royal family etc etc. oh and the paper making production process.......don't ask!

Ellis took over for a while in the afternoon giving malcolm a chance to close his eyes, albeit only for a wee while.

Another city under our belts!!!

Helsinki is nice. We managed to find a really nice hotel again for similar price to the hostels!!! why stay somewhere not very nice when you can get a little bit of luxury for the same money???

As soon as we got here it was shower, changed and go out for a drink. We though it would be nice to make a point of meeting the rally people that had kept in touch.

Turns out many of them got fined in Norway, kind of glad we werent with them!!! some 560 Euros, 850 euros and even one woman got fined 1000 euros!!

the norwegian police were not up for a rally in their country and as it turns out the truck drivers were radio-ing ahead to warn the police!!!

people got done for speeding and dangerous driving!! one person even got a 6 month ban in norway and their driving license was sent back to the uk.

it was good to put faces to names but ended up being pretty late again!!

Finland is 2 hours ahead of the uk, so we havent really gained a wee bit of extra sleep!!

Today's task is get to the ferry for 10.30 to check in and its an 11am sailing over to Estonia and our final rally destination!! the crossing will get us over there for about 2pm so it means an afternoon in Tallinn which will be nice!

weather is much more mild here so the thermals and ski suits have now been packed away!!!