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Reçu aujourd’hui — 30 décembre 2025

Saunas, electronica and air guitar: Oulu, Finland’s tech city, is European Capital of Culture 2026

30 décembre 2025 à 08:00

This Nordic city and digital hub is having its moment in the (midnight) sun, offering cultural, arty events and pleasingly eclectic silliness

A floating community sauna on frozen Lake Oulu seemed as good a place as any to ask Finnish locals what they think of the European Capital of Culture bandwagon that will be rolling into their city in 2026. Two women sweltering on the top bench seemed to sweat more over my question than over the clouds of sauna steam – the result of a beefy Finn ladling water on the wood-fired coals with a grim determination to broil us all.

“Hmmm, yes, it will bring people to Oulu, which is good, but we don’t really know much about it,” said one of the women. “We know it’s happening, but we haven’t had many details.”

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© Photograph: Jukka Lappalainen/Visit Oulu

© Photograph: Jukka Lappalainen/Visit Oulu

© Photograph: Jukka Lappalainen/Visit Oulu

Reçu hier — 29 décembre 2025

‘A watery gold sunrise lights the turbulent water’: the wild beauty of the Suffolk coast

29 décembre 2025 à 08:00

Coastal erosion may threaten the area around Southwold, but a new ‘movable’ cabin makes a great base for exploring its windswept beaches, remote marshes and welcoming inns

The crumbling cliff edge is just metres away. An automatic blind, which I can operate without getting out of bed, rises to reveal an ocean view: the dramatic storm-surging North Sea with great black-backed gulls circling nearby and a distant ship on the horizon. A watery gold sunrise lights the clouds and turbulent grey water.

I’m the first person to sleep in the new Kraken lodge at Still Southwold, a former farm in Easton Bavents on the Suffolk coast. It’s a stylish wooden cabin, one of a scattering of holiday lets in an area prone to aggressive coastal erosion. The owner, Anne Jones, describes the challenges of living on a coast that is rapidly receding in the face of climate-exacerbated storms: the waves have eroded more than 40 hectares (100 acres), and the family business “is no longer a viable farm”. Instead, it is home to low-carbon cottages and cabins, “designed to be movable when the land they stand on is lost to the sea”. The latest projects include a sea-view sauna and a ‘dune hut’ on the beach for reflexology treatments “with the sea and waves as the backdrop”.

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© Photograph: Cephas Picture Library Ltd/Alamy

© Photograph: Cephas Picture Library Ltd/Alamy

© Photograph: Cephas Picture Library Ltd/Alamy

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