Spring in Finland

Last time we were in Helsinki (in February) the temperature hadn't risen above zero for two months. On our last morning there we woke to a chilling -24 degrees! But now, in early May, the snow and ice was gone, there were tiny greenish buds emerging on the trees - but it was still very cold. We were there for another "Meet the Press" day organised by our PR company. And as in Stockholm, the visiting journalists loved our avocado oil. Let's hope we get plenty of good press!
We were going to Copenhagen the following week, so we spent the weekend in Jakobstad, in the Swedish north of Finland. Our friend Sirkka has a house there, and as we flew up we marvelled at what appeared to be salt flats out at sea. Not salt, we later discovered - it was pack ice, left over from that frozen winter. Fortunately, we hadn't counted on any early summer swims  though we'd been told by our new Helsinki media friends that this is what Finns do at the weekend, ice notwithstanding. We did go out to see Sirkka's summer cottage, but the water wasn't yet connected to the sauna, and without a sauna to recover from the cold, we were spared the true Finnish experience of sauna and ice-swim.
So we just walked on the sand beaches, well wrapped up against the invigorating wind, and went for runs around the harbour, and took a boat to the island of Maskäar to join the locals for a Mother's Day lunch, and read a lot of books - a perfect weekend.