From Lake Matildanjärvi to Teerisaari: Teijo’s Most Beautiful Hike
When someone comes to visit me in Salo from far away, I always know where I’ll take them. We head for Teijo National Park, to its very best spots: Lake Matildanjärvi and Teerisaari. Over the years I’ve gotten to lead wonderful guests down these paths — from Lapland, from Ukraine, and most recently from Alta in Norway — and the destination has never once let us down. With this story and these photos, I want to show why this corner of the country deserves a spot near the top of your list when you’re in the area.
- Teerisaari on the map
- Route approx. 2 km/one way
- Parking area: Teijo’s main parking area
- By car: Address: Matildanjärventie, Salo
- By public transport: In summer, Salo’s local bus line 30 runs all the way there (on the winter schedule the last stop is in the centre of Mathildedal, from which it’s about a 2 km walk to the trailhead). Salo is easy to reach directly by bus or train from both Helsinki and Turku.
- Fire pit: not on Teerisaari itself. Along the way there’s the Roosinniemi lean-to shelter, about a 100 m detour off the trail, and the nature centre also has a fire pit.
- Accessible: no
Since our plan for the day wasn’t to picnic out in the wild but rather to skip the backpack and cooking altogether and focus on simply lounging, wandering, and generally enjoying ourselves, we’d taken care of food before heading into the forest. First a Thai lunch buffet at BKK in Salo (not sponsored!), and then on to Teijo, where we walked the Toti Nature Trail. From there we continued a few more kilometres to Mathildedal, where we had soft drinks and coffee in the lovely garden at Matildankartano manor. Sitting there on a stool, I was already melting from the heat. The forecast had promised rain and temperatures around +15°C, but the day was quickly turning sunny and warm instead. I had far too many clothes on.
We drove on to Teijo National Park’s main parking area, just a couple of kilometres further. On a Friday noon the lot was nearly empty, with only a few cars. It was lovely to set off on the trail and see beautiful Lake Matildanjärvi. I especially loved its smooth bare-rock shores, where you can gaze out over the lake with the forest sheltering your back. On the water, the round green lily pads rocked gently among the delicate blue ripples.
My friend and colleague Kirsi, who’d come down from Alta for a summer trip to southern Finland, was thrilled to find ripe bilberries (wild blueberries). Almost exactly a year ago, on this very same spot, I watched a friend from Ukraine eating bilberries. A lake, a forest, and berries — a strikingly lovely combination, and just the thing to make anyone happy in an instant.
The trail curves around behind Lake Matildanjärvi and turns into a boardwalk, cutting across bog in places and reeds in others. After a cool, rainy morning, a lizard had found its way onto a warm, silvery plank to soak up the sun. We passed a group of two hikers, and earlier, from the rocky shore, we’d spotted someone sprawled out in a relaxed X-shape on the shoreline rocks at the Roosinniemi lean-to shelter. But for most of the walk we had the place entirely to ourselves, without another soul in sight even in the distance.
Round-leaved sundews were in bloom on the bog, and some of the cranberries had already begun to blush a faint red, though most were still completely green. There were berries everywhere, as there almost always are in summer. Someone’s in for a good cranberry harvest here, if they dare pick them straight from the edge of the trail.
The loop around Lake Matildanjärvi turns off to the left here. We carried on straight ahead toward Teerisaari and the Endal lean-to shelter. ¨I loved seeing the stunted, twisted pines rising out of the bog, its colours rich in the height of summer. Overhead, the spreading blue sky made the bog’s colours look even warmer.
For a stretch, the boardwalk follows the bank of the Välioja stream. On the left, a shallow little river flows through downy grass; on the right, a pine forest thick with marsh rosemary spreads out. I always tell myself I should come here when the marsh rosemary is in flower, but somehow that window in summer nearly always slips by before I remember.
Well before we reached Teerisaari, I already had a feeling there’d be no one there. I let out a deep sigh of joy and relief — the whole place to ourselves, complete and perfect peace. The lean-to shelter at Teerisaari, where I myself slept as a kid on a birdwatching trip with my dad, burned down a couple of years ago, and no new one has been built. Maybe that’s exactly what’s kept the place so quiet.
Teerisaari isn’t a true island surrounded by water. It’s a rocky, wooded rise at the edge of the bog, on the shore of Lake Puolakkajärvi. I peeled off my hot rubber boots and flung my sweaty socks aside in no time flat, then found a spot on the rocky shore shaded by trees where I could dip my feet in the water to cool off. How can something so simple bring such a wonderful feeling?
Kirsi and I noticed that the flowers on the rocky shore were absolutely full — and I mean FULL — of butterflies. Among the bumblebees, common blues were flitting about, and I think I also spotted a cabbage white and maybe even a silver-washed fritillary. I don’t fully trust my butterfly-identification skills, though, I’m better with birds. The butterflies weren’t at all shy of us, and we ended up photographing them for a good while.
My partner was chilling out on the rocks a little higher up. We didn’t do anything more ambitious than that. We hadn’t even brought along coffee or anything else. We just sat, took it all in, admired the views and the butterflies, and savoured the peace of the place. Even though the surface water in the lake was warm, soaking and splashing my feet in it left my whole body feeling pleasantly refreshed and cooler.
Before heading back, we padded a little further along Teerisaari’s shoreline rocks. I walked barefoot so my feet could catch some air and a cooling breeze before I had to pull my socks and rubber boots back on. Bare rock is a lovely surface underfoot, and even pine needles are quite pleasant to walk on. I did my best to dodge the pine cones, though.
Back at the parking area, we stopped for soft drinks at Teijo’s little nature centre. Then one last dip into nature: we climbed up onto the rocky shore behind the nature centre and followed the Matildanjärvi loop trail along the shoreline to the sandy beaches at Kariholma.
To my mind, these are some of the very best spots in Teijo, and all of Salo. I don’t mind one bit sharing them with weekend visitors, since I’m lucky enough to live close enough to come and enjoy the quiet of these trails on ordinary weekdays myself. When I moved back to Salo from Lapland, I worried about crowds in the south, but that turned out to be nothing more than something I’d imagined. I’ve never once had to fight through a crowd here. We didn’t find a single piece of litter the whole trip, by the way, and both dogs we came across were on a leash. Well done, everyone!
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