Wednesday 15 June – Seskara to Rovaniemi

Another bright start and after the usual chores away before 11.00. First call to the Tourist Info office in Haparanda to check on dog regulations, which by the time we'd found the office was immaterial anyway because we'd already been in and out of Finland with no checks. Nevertheless they confirmed everything was fine so we went looking for a bank to get some Finnish currency. Doh! It's euros! Changed some Swedish anyway but we've already got euros.

Our site last night was actually on an island.

Never mind, next port of call was to be one of the highlights of our trip, a visit to Santa Claus! Sad aren't we? You would think that such an attraction would be well signposted but we ended up in the middle of Rovaniemi without a clue going round in circles looking for the T.I. Which was signposted but we never found it. In the end we escaped the city and stopped to investigate. TomTom said “yep, know where that is” so we let him get on with it and sure enough about 7km out of the city we came to Santa Claus Village which, of course, is also on the Arctic Circle.

Gone for his break!

It being June and 19 deg C the place wasn't exactly overrun, so we had a bit of lunch then went exploring. As you would expect everything revolves around Santa Claus and our first item was to send postcards and get a few prezzies. Then of course we just had to visit Santa, which was free. But just to prove it we bought the photos and video too – they're nearly as bad as Disney; once we've got it sorted we'll (maybe!) post a link. We're never going to live it down.

The REAL Father Christmas!

Finland is yet another hour ahead of UK time (2hrs) so despite it feeling mid-afternoon everything was closing down. Just enough time for a final couple of purchases then we were directed to an area where we could park overnight and joined several other vans in the evening sunshine. Because we're at the Arctic Circle, of course, the sun will probably never set properly now!