If you only have one long afternoon in Hanko, I would personally recommend two things above everything else: a stroll along the grand wooden villas of Appelgrenintie road (along which you’ll also find one of Hanko’s most famous beaches, Bellevue), and the Tulliniemi (Uddskatan) nature trail, which winds through beautiful shoreline nature all the way […]
My friend and I had planned our forest date days in advance. Nothing special, really, just an ordinary Sunday and an ordinary patch of forest close to home. But there’s something about that ordinariness I can never quite explain, except to say: it’s always enough. The Sunday morning didn’t promise anything remarkable. The sky was […]
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 […]
We arrived in Rovaniemi in the early evening, after almost 12 hours on the road from southern Finland, winding our way up through the small towns of Ostrobothnia. There’s an easier way to get here — the night train will take you from Helsinki straight to Rovaniemi without you lifting a finger — but our […]
If you want to know whether the Finnish blueberry season has started, you don’t even have to go into the forest. Just look down: bird droppings have turned purple. Birds love blueberries as much as people do, and by late July their droppings give away the fact that it’s time to head into the woods. […]
The sky was grey and the air rich with oxygen when my husband, our friend, and I set out on a weekday in July to walk the Värikallio Loop trail in Hossa National Park, in Suomussalmi, Kainuu. The forecast promised heavy rain all day, but we’d decided in advance not to let it ruin the […]
Pirunkurun ponnistus When I arrive in Ă„käslompolo, a beautiful summer day that started sunny, but windy, turns rainy. The rain continues when I park my car in the carpark of Kesänkijärvi. So, I decide to eat my lunch in the car, while staring at the raindrops running down the windscreen. While enjoying a tasty baguette, […]
In commercial cooperation with Visit Puolanka, Municipality of Puolanka, Paljakka, UVM project, co-funded by the European Union Hepoköngäs in Puolanka, Kainuu is one of Finland’s largest waterfalls — and one of the few that is accessible to almost everyone, thanks to an accessible trail leading all the way to the falls. You can experience the […]
In commercial cooperation with Visit Puolanka, Municipality of Puolanka, Paljakka, UVM project, co-funded by the European Union The Pyssykulju loop (4 km) is an easy outing even with younger children. The trail starts and ends at a lean-to shelter on the shore of a small lake, and the scenery shifts constantly along the way. Adults […]
Sapokka Water Garden spreads across the area surrounding Sapokka Bay in Kotka. It’s a beautiful park where water features play a central role. My memory had long held onto an image of a tall waterfall in Sapokka, so when I arrived in Kotka for an entirely different reason and that very waterfall happened to catch […]
