Day 17 - Smile! You're on Camera.

2 Sept

What a day! Today was just a travel day, but the highway E8 from the Arctic Circle to Vaasa has to be experienced to be believed. The route took us to the coastline of the Baltic Sea. Did we see any of it? No. The highway is lined with pine and birch trees. The only break was for the occasional shopping precinct, service station or later in the day a farm or two.

The day started out a little foggy, but the view left and right was about it for the day.

The Finnish authorities have determined that to improve driver behaviour, multiple speed cameras would be installed along the highway. At every intersection the speed would be dropped from 100 to 80 and then in some areas 60 kph. The speed camera posts were there standing silent sentinel. Did they have cameras in them? No way of telling until it was too late. In one section on approach to roadworks, the speed was dropped to 50 (expected) then raised to 60 only to be dropped to 30 kph all in a matter of 100 or so metres. If the camera was active in that area what speed was it's trigger?

These buggers were everywhere.  We literally passed hundreds of them today.
Cruise control helped.  Click down to 80 then click back up to 100 once past.
Hope I got them all.

The bugbear was there was no real consistency in application. On one section of the road, there were two lanes. However, the lanes were wide enough to allow overtaking without necessarily being on the wrong side of the road. Further on there was a new road surface without road markings that went for 14 kilometres or more all at 80 kph. Also, there was what would pass for a completed road and yes, you guessed it we were restricted to 80kph. No one was working there as it was Saturday afternoon.

To top off a rather ordinary day of driving, we caught up to two wide load vehicles. The pilots took an age before they pulled the group over to let the stream of traffic behind pass.

These held us up for half an hour or so.

There are a couple of positives to chalk up for today. We called into a shopping centre with the objective of finding a toilet. We did! It was almost like home. We then had a walk through the KMart style shop and found AAA lithium batteries. SPOT will again be performing to optimum.

We arrived in Vaasa and with a little uncertainty we found our hotel. Our room is overlooking the community square. There is a food festival on and for €12, we have been told that we should be able to get a three course meal each. We're off in search to find if this is really the case.

Vaasa from our Hotel window.