Holiday Planning - the Fred Pontin way!

Back in the 60s and 70s, holiday planning didn't start until after Christmas. Usually on Boxing Day, the holiday adverts would start, with the prime TV slot being about 2 pm. Frequently, the "winner" in the battle to get this slot was the holiday camp business of Pontins, rival to Butlins, Warners and Maplins (who were fictitious, but  summed up everything about those Hi-di-Hi holidays). Pontins adverts were famous because the boss, none other than Fred Pontin himself, reputedly the inspiration for Joe Maplin would encourage you to "book early".

Fred Pontin in his usual pose, encouraging you to "Book Early!"

Booking early is something that I like as well. When we were burning to a frazzle in the Arizona desert in the middle of a heatwave earlier this year, Ann said "can we go somewhere a little cooler next year? Like Finland?" 

We spent a while living in Finland between August and November 1981 - and celebrated our first wedding anniversary there - while I was working for Nokia.  At the time, no-one outside of Finland had heard of Nokia as it was before the mobile phone revolution, but they had a computer business and that was the bit I worked for. 

One of the new products was an electronic point of sale terminal, with some software that would deal with stock control and inventory levels as well as calculating the value of a sale and cashing up each evening. For the early 1980s, this was pretty revolutionary. My task was to create the documentation and manuals to widen the product to the more general market. As it turned out, it really was too revolutionary for the rest of the world who were stuck with old fashioned cash tills and manual stock checking, but it got us a few weeks living in the Helsinki suburbs.

So next year, we are going back to Finland and the last 24 hours has been a mad booking frenzy. Two rental properties, three hotels, a rental car and flights. We got a cracking deal on the flights: London to Helsinki by British Airways Business Class (regular readers will recall that Ann has been thoroughly spoilt over the years and doesn't travel at the back of the plane) with change from £400 for both of us, return, plus a wodge of "Avios" miles that I am still using from when i was travelling for work.

It is much too far to drive now that you can't get direct ferries to Denmark or Sweden and the only option is to drive all through France, Belgium, Holland and Germany, then a ferry to Copenhagen, across the big bridge to Sweden to drive to Stockholm and then a further ferry to Finland. 

We'll stay local to the airport on the first night having picked up a rental car and have rented a cottage in the middle of the Finnish lakes about 20 miles north of Kuopio (Google maps is your friend). On the way, we are planning to revisit the home of probably the most famous Finn - Sibelius.

home for a week

View from the terrace

The cottage is quite small, but has a little covered patio for the barbecue and its own sauna in the small wooden building that can be seen from the terrace. And a pier and private beach on the lake. And a boat with a little outboard motor. I'll need fishing lessons.

So after a week here, we'll head off to Savonlinna, closer to the border with Russia. It's a festival town with regular musical events and a renowned Opera Festival. We've booked a hotel overlooking the harbour on the lake.  

A couple of pictures of Savonlinna

Following that, a couple of days on the outskirts of Helsinki to give easy access to a few places to visit and then a rented apartment right in the City of Helsinki for 4 days to do the sights.

And the timing - the first half of June, so it will be light until about 11 pm and dawn will come again at about 1 am.

One of the places on the visit list is Hvittrask, formerly home of three world famous Finnish architects and designers in the same sort of style as Charles Rennie Macintosh and William Morris. There's a museum and restaurant; its about 20 miles west of Helsinki

Seurasaari - an island open air museum of buildings from all over Finland. Everything from turf huts to palatial farmhouses.

The Orthodox cathedral on the harbour front. Taken in 1981 during our long stay

A very young Ann aged 24 at the base of the Cathedral

You'll notice a lot of blue sky in the pictures. Although it is a long way north, the weather in early summer is often very good with bright sunny days and quite reasonable temperatures in the mid 20s Celsius. winter, though, is a different matter. The worst I experienced when visiting was -40 Celsius. That is the sort of weather when you are very pleased not to be a brass monkey...

And to "finish", a couple of tourist board images of Helsinki.