Swimming pool in Finland which Alessandro uses
Welcome to Finland, but first a note from Jenny
Fri, 16 Mar 2012, Nokia, Finland
Posted on 5 February 2012
While in Latvia (for the cold water swimming world championships) a few weeks ago, we met Nicola Sanderson's cousin, Alessandro Fui. He was a Serps member in 2004. I swapped my Serpentine swim hat with his swimming club woolly hat. Alessandro currently lives and swims in Finland. He sent this information about the competition, if anyone is interested. The attached photo shows the steps at his local swimming place. If we're lucky it could almost look like that at the Serps tomorrow.
Enjoy the ice and snow this weekend,
Jenny
And from Alessandro in Finland.
Weather in Finland with temperatures between -20c and -30c in the Tampere region. So, we look forward to a proper winter swimming national championships in little more than a month from now. In mid-March the temperatures are usually between 0 and -10, but on a sunny day it can get much warmer than that, because the sun will be already pretty high and days will be long.
Below, I collected some links and info that may be useful for those there in UK that still need to decide about their participation to the largest winter swimming event of the year (yes, it is usually larger than the world championships because here all the Finnish grandmothers are taking part, even those who cannot travel abroad).
Unfortunately, there is very little information in English on the championships website http://www.avanto2012.fi/
The registration forms are here:
The website of the past edition is more complete http://www.avanto2011.fi/en/front+page/ and can be taken as a rough reference to this year's edition.
The town of Nokia (which gave the name to the company) is just adjacent to Tampere and I advise everyone to book accommodation in Tampere, and not in Nokia. There are frequent buses connecting Nokia to the centre of Tampere. Accommodation in Finland is quite expensive (but perhaps still cheaper than in the UK).
These are considered to be the most affordable and reasonable places in the center of Tampere:
http://www.hostelsofia.fi/en/
https://www.omenahotels.com/en
http://dreamhostel.fi/
There are regular flights between Tampere (Pirkkala Airport http://www.finavia.fi/airports/airport_tampere-pirkkala ) and London. During this season, I guess that all flights are operated by RyanAir. The airport is about 15 minutes drive from the center of Tampere and there are shuttle busses for all flights leaving from the railway station ( http://www.airpro.fi/linjaautojenaikataulut ).
Tampere is acclaimed as the winter-swimming Mecca in Finland (hence in the world), with many facilities for winter swimming, including several lake-side public saunas. The largest and best of these saunas is operated by our winter-swimming association http://www.talviuimarit.fi/
Tourist info about Tampere and surroundings is here http://www.visittampere.fi/frontpage_en
You can get a decent brochure in English at http://www.visittampere.fi/file_attachment/get/PirMat_2012_eng_web.pdf?attachment_id=2054
Please do share the above information with all who might be interesting in coming to Nokia/Tampere.
Welcome to Finland
Alessandro
