Birthday Boy on the Archipelago, Nagu (Nauvo), Finland

Zagan the motorhome is on an island, one of 25,000 islands, islets and skerries that make up the Turku Archipelago. He’s resting his wheels after a morning of bridges and a free ferry ride to get to a car park in Nagu (N60.18810, E21.90201) or Nauvo depending on whether you speak Finnish or Swedish  – everywhere is signposted for both.

Today it’s Jay’s birthday! I won’t say how old he is, but as he opened his birthday card from my parents (they’re so organised we’re given cards before we leave) and eyed up the bottle of real ale I’d kept hidden from him since we set off, he mumbled something about 11 years until his private pensions become available, then chuckled to himself. It’s really strange to think that it would be another twelve years after that before any state pension would start paying out (we’re assuming there won’t be one) and we could retire from work.

Yes it is a Lidl tiramisu with a tealight – sometimes you have to improvise!

Birthday boy had a choice of where he wanted to spend his day, and he opted for the Turku Archipelago, so a little after 10am we set off. First stop was to check out a potential service point in Turku. We’d done some internet digging and found a website that lists free motorhome service points in Finland. Known as Ajokaivots, these little heated booths are scattered across the country and with the help of Google Translate we got to the page with the GPS co-ordinates for all the stations, and a link to a map, and that’s pretty much all we need. A trip to the one in Turku (N60.44415,E22.22378) enabled us to empty the grey tank and some liquid from the loo which had to go into the grey drain too (as the only thing that looked like a black water point was clogged up so we avoided it). We took on board water and washed the area down so it was cleaner than when we arrived and we were good to go.

Tucked away on an industrial estate, we would never have found this.

Crossing over the bridge onto the first of the islands we were a bit discouraged, it looked like the mainland. Our first planned stop in Pargas was aborted after the car park by the marina was also overlooking a huge factory. We drove another 17 kilometres to Lillmalo where satnav directed us to carry on for 60 metres and take the ferry – she’s never uttered that phrase before. We arrived just as a ferry left, which gave me time to nip out and have a quick look around, while an enterprising lady loaded up a trolley with donuts, donned a backpack full of coffee and worked her way up the forming queue as a mobile Starbucks.

The crossing only takes 10 minutes and two boats run it in the daytime, so it wasn’t long before we were starting up our engines ready to board. We were initially concerned that Zagan might not fit on one of the free ferries (memories of a free ferry in Poland that never was), so but when a huge two-trailer lorry pulled up next to us in the priority lane our minds were put at rest. As we trundled onto the boat, we were amazed at how many cars they managed to get on behind us, and as we’ve never been on a free ferry before, we got a bit carried away shooting a video of the experience.

Just when we thought all the fun was over the huge lorry next to us pulled away and revealed the mystery as to how they got so many cars on board – it had a double-decker stacking bit which lifted up and lowered when needed. Needless to say we were suitably impressed!

Now in a convoy of cars we made our way to Nagu, following the lead car as there is pretty much no where else to go. As the town is on an island served by ferries, traffic along the main road comes in waves about every 10 minutes from the direction we came in, and three times a day from the middle of the town. We stopped at a small marina that was in our campingcar infos database and headed off for a look around. The small marina was lovely, but right next to some houses, so after scouting out a bigger car park in the middle of town, we moved here and had a spot of lunch in Zagan followed by Jay’s birthday tiramisu.

Our first stop

We then set off for a look around the small town, which has waterways by where we are parked, and a beach and ferry port a two minute walk away on the other side of town. After watching the lunchtime ferry come in (it’s all about ferries today). Its bow rose up like a top jaw ready to take a bite of the dock while a gangway dropped down like a tongue. After watching it unload we strolled through some woods to a beach where we found a sunny spot on a huge bit of rock and chilled out watching the local kids playing in the water.

On our way back to Zagan we took a look around the local church, which is made of stone with a wooden tiled roof. The graveyard is immaculate, with freshly planted plants (since the snow thawed) at the foot of graves. To help keep it in such good condition, at the end of each row is a hose, watering cans and a gardening toolkit for tending to the plants. Inside the church was plain and simple with very little religious iconography, just an early Finnish bible from the 1600’s in a glass case and a ship hanging from the ceiling. Surrounded by the sea like the town is, it’s no wonder it’s there.

Early Finnish Bible

Choose your religious book – not sure if that is a bible in Arabic? (it may be upside down)

For the rest of the day we did very little, the sun is out, the birds are singing and this place is wonderfully chilled. So I’ll leave you with some more bird photos as we keep seeing the families out on the water.

Ju x

PS – I can’t not mention the EU referendum vote tomorrow. We’ve been told by a reader that some political adverts have been popping up on our site, so I wanted to set the record straight. We aren’t going to publicise how we have voted (taking advantage of one of the wonderful aspects of our democratic process). Any adverts shouldn’t be taken as a direct endorsement by us (unless we directly state otherwise). What I will say is that I have voted so I can complain about the outcome, but if you don’t vote then you can’t – so make sure you get to a polling station folks.

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