One of the best sites I've found for travelers in Britain would not exist had not a bank in Finland sent a young employee to London for training in 1961.
"I spent six months in London staying in one of those lovely Bed Breakfast, BB places," Risto Hurmalainen recalled. "I learned banking, but I also learned a lot about the British way of living from those nice people keeping this BB. They took me to see the ancient monuments and museums, castles and fortifications. They showed me how the old British aristocracy used to live in their magnificent Stately Homes, now open to the public. All this was something quite new for me, as we in Finland did not have anything like that. My English landlord certainly woke the interest in British history in me."
Throughout the '70s and '80s Hurmalainen and his wife vacationed in Britain every two or three years, and when he retired a few years ago they visited even more often, "from one to two and even three visits per year."
The focus of those trips was Britain's castles and stately homes.
And thus was spawned Hurmalainen's Web site, British Castles, Stately Homes and Houses (http://www.dlc.fi/tildehurmari/castles.html).
"I have . . . a pretty comprehensive collection of color slides taken from various parts of Britain," he said. "This offered me a chance to publish some of my photos taken of the castles, and there are now about 150 places on my list."
And Risto isn't done yet.
The Hurmalainens were headed back to the United Kingdom for a visit to castles and stately homes in Scotland this summer.
Hurmalainen has a second site devoted to In Britain magazine (http://www.dlc.fi/tildehurmari/inbrit.html), the British Tourist Authority publication that he has been using for almost 30 years to help plan his trips.
The In Britain site includes selected articles and an events listing from the current edition, and there are indexes for each issue dating back to January 1970.
The Online Traveler is a weekly guide to travel information available in cyberspace. Send e-mail to The Online Traveler at jgarrett@pe.net or visit the Web site, http://www.inlandempireonline.com/traveler
Published 8/15/1999