Rauma smells of tar, sea air and woodsmoke, or at least it does in the old quarter, where over six hundred wooden houses crowd along narrow streets that have changed little in layout since the Middle Ages. Old Rauma is the largest unified wooden town in the Nordic countries, and it was added to the World Heritage list in 1991. The houses are low, painted in ochres, reds and soft greens, with tidy yards, carved doors and little cobbled lanes, and many of them are still lived in, which gives the place a lived-in rather than museum feel.
The town grew up around a Franciscan friary in the fifteenth century, and the roofless ruin of the Church of the Holy Cross still stands among the houses. Rauma was a trading and seafaring town, shipping timber and tar from the forests of Finland across the Baltic, and the sailors' houses of the old quarter have a sturdy, practical character. Today it is also known for bobbin lace, which was made here for generations, and a lace week in July fills the streets with makers and visitors. Locals speak a distinctive dialect, with words that can baffle other Finns, and they are proud of it.
For a rider the old town is a place for walking, as the streets are narrow and the cobbles uneven, so park near the edge and go on foot. The country around is flat, green and watery, on the south-west coast of Finland, and the roads that link Rauma to Pori and Turku are straight and fast, with long views over fields and forests. The corners are few, speed limits are strictly enforced, and at dusk the real danger is elk and deer on the road, so keep an eye on the verges.
Rauma is a town of over thirty-six thousand people, so fuel, supermarkets and restaurants are easy to find. A Finnish lunch of fish soup, or fried Baltic herring with mashed potato, is easy to come by, and the cafés in the old quarter serve coffee and cardamom buns. The best time is summer, when the long evenings give light until late, and the old streets are at their most relaxed.
The ride combines Rauma with Alvar Aalto's sanatorium at Paimio, so you move from medieval timber to twentieth-century modernism in a day.