Bob from the Nature Travels team joined our Cross Country Skiing in Hossa and Kalevala tour in Finland (Option 1: 100km) in late March.
Day 1 – Yawning and Moomins
I love living in Dorset, but the downside is that, when I need to travel, which of course I’m lucky to be able to do often, it usually requires a horribly early start. This trip was no different. My alarm went off at 2.30am and I made my way bleary eyed to the car for the drive to Bournemouth, where I’d park to take the National Express to Heathrow. It’s also possible to travel by train + bus from my home in Dorchester to Heathrow, but only if you have an afternoon flight. For earlier departures, the National Express “red-eye” is the only option if you want to avoid driving. But actually, I like National Express buses very much – their punctuality and friendliness of service has improved enormously over the years, and it’s quite relaxing to sit back and let someone else take care of the driving.
My travel plan required a 5-hour layover at Helsinki airport before the onward flight to Kuusamo, but the time passed surprisingly quickly. Douglas Adams wrote, “It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression ‘as pretty as an airport’. Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort.”
But he’d clearly never been to Helsinki airport.
As airports go, Helsinki Vantaa is surprisingly pleasant – spacious, light, airy, copiously furnished with padded benches that you can stretch out on (and even the odd lounger), some cosy cafes (including a rather cute vintage tea shop and second-hand store), the obligatory overpriced Moomin souvenir store of course (if you don’t know what a Moomin is, check them out, they’re adorable), and toilets that play birdsong to you. Not a bad place to spend time at all, and a stark contrast to the hard-edged, nerve-shredding mayhem of Heathrow.
Our plane for the internal flight to Kuusamo was a small turbo-prop, which added to the sense of an adventure to come. Many regional airports in Finland are tiny and capacity is limited – book early as flights often sell out. Our group collected in the small arrival hall at Kuusamo and we set off into the night towards Hossa, an hour or so away, where we’d be spending the first two nights of the tour.
Flights normally arrive in the afternoon, but ours was a late evening connection, so it was midnight by the time we arrived at our accommodation. We were warmly greeted with a hug by our guide, Anna, and sat down for a midnight snack and a chat before retiring. Breakfast was to be at a very civilised 08.30 to give us chance to recover from our travels.
Day 2 – A sunny ski to Hossa National Park
The sun was shining and there was a palpable sense of excitement in the group as we sat down to breakfast, making sure to take a good helping from the porridge pot for some slow-release energy out on the trail.
We were a lively and varied group – three from the UK including me, three Germans, one Austrian, two Finns and a Canadian couple. It was shaping up to be a good week.
From the discussions over breakfast, it quickly became apparent that I was going to be pretty much at the bottom of the heap when it came to cross country skiing ability and experience. I’ve done a fair amount of both backcountry and downhill skiing, but much less classic cross country skiing, and my technique was definitely lacking in finesse.
But that’s fine – one of the great things about this tour is the flexibility to accommodate quite a range of levels (more about that later). Still, I silently congratulated myself that I had been organised enough to put in some training in the weeks leading up to the tour. Dorset is not known for its winter snows, so I hadn’t had the opportunity to be on skis since a brief backcountry trip to Norway in January. So to get ready for the tour, I’d been diligently heading out for 5km runs around our local park in Dorchester, interspersed with some sessions on the open-air gym equipment. I had the feeling I was going to be glad I’d done some preparation.
Today we would be starting gently, skiing 7km to the visitor centre at Hossa, just inside the National Park, where we’d have lunch. Those of us who needed to hire ski equipment got fitted for boots and skis, and we headed out onto the snow-covered lake in glorious sunshine.
Cross country skiing is just a beautiful way to travel through the winter landscape. Active, certainly, but also meditative and peaceful. We skied in a long curve around the edges of the lake and arrived at the visitor centre for lunch.
In general, food in all the Nordic countries is of high standard, but I think Finland probably has the edge. I’ve never had a bad meal in Finland, but have been lucky enough to have many, many wonderfully memorable ones. Lunches on the rest of the tour would be “wild”, but today we were treated to a delicious salmon soup with salad buffet at the visitor centre restaurant.
After lunch, we skied a 3km loop inside Hossa National Park before returning in the afternoon sun to our accommodation, with our first 17km of skiing in the bag.
Each of the accommodation locations during the tour has its own special character and appeal. This one is a former Border Guard station – functional, but comfortable and cosy. The people you meet on tours like this are as much of a part of the experience as the landscapes and the activities, and we received a traditional Finnish welcome from our host here – warm, kindly, and genuinely caring that we enjoyed our stay.
After our first day of skiing, all sorts of muscles I had forgotten about (or never known I had) were telling me it was time to go to the sauna. There really is no better way to wind down after a day outdoors. For the Finns, sauna is deeply rooted in their culture (you can read more about Finnish sauna culture in our blog article here). Whether or not the claim that Finland has more saunas than cars is actually true, there sure are a lot of them!
And our accommodation here had an extra treat in store. Because it’s next to the lake, you also get the opportunity for some “ice bathing”. A walkway leads from the sauna house down to the water, where a hole in the ice is kept open and a short ladder installed to lower yourself into the freezing darkness (don’t worry, it’s only waist deep – there’s no chance you’ll be swept away).
This is optional of course, but I strongly recommend taking the plunge. Get nice and hot in the sauna first, head down to the water and lower yourself in gently until the water covers your shoulders, remembering to breathe slowly. Instead of leaping straight back out again screaming, take a moment to steady yourself and appreciate where you are and how your body feels. See if you can ask an obliging sauna buddy to record the moment for posterity, then calmly step out and head back to the sauna to warm up.
I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll have promised yourself you’ll only try it once, but 15 minutes later you’ll be back for another go. To my surprise, I had three.
Suitably mellowed by our sauna experience (which oddly also piques the appetite), after the quick welcome snack of the night before, we had time for a proper dinner this evening, with a hearty vegetable lasagne on the menu. A very good end to a very good day!
Day 3 – Here Be Bears
Today we’d be moving to a new location, Martinselkonen Wilderness Centre, where we’d spend the next two nights. We began the day with a drive with the transport vehicle to the centre, where we left our luggage and got ready for the day’s tour. We’d be covering about 17km again today.
One of the regular features of each morning was the group warm-up before we took to the trail. We stood in a circle and took turns to demonstrate a little stretch or other exercise that everyone copied before moving onto the next person. Great for team building and a good chance to ease out the kinks in our muscles!
As soon as we set off, you could immediately see that the forest here had a very different character to the landscape we’d been skiing through in Hossa, with larger trees towering above us as we skied along, interspersed with lovely open areas of frozen marshland.
The temptation when you first come to northern Finland is to think that everything looks the same – endless trees and lakes. But that’s not true at all. You’ll quickly begin to notice the variations in character of the different areas and start to appreciate the beauty of small things and small differences – the way a particular tree stump is shaped and patterned, how the sunlight catches the bark, how some branches are beautifully bedecked with “Old Man’s Beard” lichen, which thrives here and is a bio-indicator of excellent air quality. On some days, you’ll be partially retracing your tracks to connect to a new ski route, and you might think it’s ridiculous to be able to say, “I’ve passed this tree before”. But you will!
Eastern Finland is heaving with wildlife – the wide buffer zone along the border (at least 2-3km on the Finnish side and 30-50km on the Russian side) creates a vast undisturbed wilderness area, where many animals, including brown bears and wolverines, thrive.
This was the last tour of the season and spring was just around the corner. Reports were that the first bears were just waking up from hibernation and the first tracks had been seen. It was hugely exciting to think that these beautiful animals were now roaming the forests
In a few weeks’ time, visitors would be coming to the area for nightly bear-watching experiences in special hides (we passed some during the day’s skiing) and it was wonderful to think that such majestic animals were so close by. We’re sometimes asked whether bears and other predators are a cause for concern when travelling in the Nordic countries – the answer is, while of course all wild animals should be regarded with caution and respect – no. Finnish bears are very shy and, even if there were a bear in the area, it would most likely be gone long before you’re ever aware it was there.
It’s not just bears of course that populate these forests – during the day we passed numerous tracks in the snow, including arctic hare and red fox. Jen, one of the guests from the UK, used the “Merlin” app (a research project of Cornell University and completely free) to identify some birdsong, which turned out to be crossbills, and we also spotted a couple of woodpeckers.
Just as my legs were telling me it was time for a sit-down, a lovely wilderness cabin overlooking the river came into view through the trees, and I could smell wood-smoke – perfect timing!
I’m used to lunch on the trail being a very basic affair, but this tour offers some extra pampering when it’s time for lunch.
Going ahead of the group each day is a snowmobile, this week driven by the charming Kassu. The snowmobile not only makes the ski tracks, so that you have a nice, fresh trail to ski on each day which is easy to follow (so faster skiers can go on ahead without fear of getting lost), but also means that lunch is prepared for you and the fire is burning brightly when you arrive at your lunch stop. An extra bonus is that you can put a small bag with your warm layer in the snowmobile in the morning to use at lunchtime, reducing what you need to carry with you when skiing.
Lunch each day is soup with bread (cheese and meat slices available for extra toppings), followed by coffee and biscuits. Today’s soup was a delicious pea soup, a traditional lunch in Finland on Thursdays.
Suitably recharged and before putting our skis on again, we listened to some information from Kassu about the afternoon trail, which would also be relevant for the days ahead. We’d be skiing along the buffer zone that separates Finland and Russia. This is no problem at all – simply keep to the track – but it’s very important to observe. Kassu worked as a Finnish border guard for 30 years, so he knows what he’s talking about. The border is marked very clearly and the restricted area is very obvious. Don’t be tempted to cross the line, not even a metre. The Finnish border service patrols the border diligently and will issue a hefty fine (more than €900 Euros) for transgressions!
The afternoon was an easy end to the day’s skiing, but that didn’t stop me from tucking into the afternoon tea with gusto when we arrived back at Martinselkonen – it was spinach pastries and cinnamon buns today. That’s another little luxury of the tour – afternoon tea is always served when you get back, then it’s time for sauna before dinner.
A lovely session in the spacious wood-fired sauna prepared us nicely for dinner, for which the veggie option for me was a very tasty lentil dish, while the carnivores had chicken in cream sauce, followed by “mammi”, a traditional Finnish dessert I hadn’t had before but would definitely have again.
I’d confidently assumed that I’d burn off any calories from the trip easily with each day’s skiing and so could indulge at will, but I hadn’t counted on how more-ish the food was going to be. I stepped on the scales when I got home and was dismayed to find I’d somehow managed to put on a kilo during the week.
Day 4- Eagle Ahoy!
This was to be the longest day of skiing – about 23km or so on a day tour from Martinselkonen. After two days on the trail, I was really starting to get into this, and didn’t feel as daunted by the prospect as I had before I arrived (if I could pull a pulk for 20km a day for a week on our Backcountry Skiing and Northern Lights in Finnish Lapland tour, I don’t know what I was worrying about, but for some reason the more technical aspect and higher pace of classic cross country skiing had made me wonder how I’d find it).
And sure enough, although my legs certainly felt like they’d done the distance by end of the afternoon, this would turn out to be a straightforward and hugely enjoyable day. The morning route took us around a long, narrow, lake, where a highlight was spotting some very large tracks which were most likely bear (although too covered with recent snowfall to be sure).
It was snowing gently today, which cast an extra hush over an already practically silent landscape like throwing a fluffy duvet over the world, and was simply magical. It’s a cliche to say so, but it was.
Four of us (we christened ourselves “Team Langsam”) brought up the rear as usual, and together with our guide, Anna, reached the lunch stop a good way behind the faster skiers.
This was to be the pattern for the week and was partly (at least in my case) because we were less competent skiers than others in the group, but also because we were hugely enjoying taking our time to enjoy the beauty of the forest, revel in the immense silence and get wide-eyed with excitement on finding new animal tracks or spotting a new bird. For me, such pleasures are really what being in the outdoors is all about.
But being a bit slower is no problem. Early arrivals can simply relax around the fire with an extra cup of hot blueberry squash, or even ski a few extra kilometres, until the backmarkers arrive and everyone can have lunch together.
Tomato soup was on the menu today, before an afternoon route which took us along a lateral morraine ridge formed in the Ice Age and back to Martinselkonen. More wildlife highlights were to greet Team Langsam this afternoon, as we spotted a White-tailed Sea Eagle lifting gracefully from the treetops. Wilf attempted to communicate with some local crows, but apparently Finnish crows speak a different dialect from their Scottish cousins.
Afternoon tea was savoury pastries and pancakes with strawberry jam, and sauna time was once more soon upon us. Veggie dinner was a wonderful dish of wild mushrooms gathered from the forest by our hosts (lamb for the carnivores), while we watched red squirrels and an arctic hare taking advantage of the bird feeder through the window.
It was Good Friday – and we’d had a visit from our very own Easter Bunny!
Day 5 – Towards Arola
The squirrels greeted us again at breakfast time before we set off to ski to our third and final accommodation location at Arola, about 19km away.
More beautiful, ancient forest today, with the snow once more falling gently as we made our way through the reserve. Kassu had prepared a delicious lentil soup for the lunch stop.
Arola is a very special place. Run by the indomitable and utterly lovely Helena, who came to the farm 50 years ago, it has history and stories oozing from every ancient beam of the old log house, where meals are served.
We were welcomed with an afternoon tea of potato scones and home-made carrot cake.
After dinner, Helena gathered us around the dining table like kindergarten children at storytime and held us enthralled with tales of the farm’s history – and there are some fascinating tales to be heard. Being located right on the Russian border, there’s been a lot taking place over the decades.
Day 6 – Fresh Tracks
For Team Langsam, there was plenty to get excited about on the animal track front today as we covered our last 22km or so of the week. The sun was shining again and it made for a glorious end to the trip.
More fresh snow during the night made things perfect for seeing evidence of just how much wildlife there is in this area, even if most of the time you never see it. We spotted tracks of wood mouse, pine marten, stoat, squirrel, arctic hare and capercaillie and (the icing on the cake, eliciting some involuntary whoops of excitement from Jen and I) – wolverine!
They get some bad press, but wolverines are my favourite Nordic mammal (find out more about them in our blog article on wolverines) and I have a particular fondness for their tenacity. I’ve been lucky enough to spot one in the wild on a backcountry ski tour in the Swedish mountains, and it was just thrilling to see such clear and obviously very recent tracks of these amazing animals crossing our trail on several occasions during the day.
Kassu once again provided a lunchtime treat, with salmon soup this time and some mini Easter eggs to mark the season. Feeling rather wistful that our week in the wilderness was coming to an end, Team Langsam took its time even more than usual on the afternoon ski back towards Arola, stopping regularly to ponder new tracks or just to suck in the deliciously pure air.
Anna was wonderfully patient with us as we dithered along, trying to delay the inevitable end, until it started looking like we might be late for sauna time, at which point we were gently (but firmly) encouraged to get a move on. Note to self: Come between a Finn and their sauna at your peril!
For me, I decided to mark the end of the week with a mid-sauna naked snow angel, which I was rather pleased with. Such works of art are inevitably ephemeral, and the imprint of my bottom was soon to be mercifully erased by new snowfall.
Helena was in fine storytelling form once more this evening, this time captivating us with tales from her long experience of watching the bears with which she shares the wilderness.
Day 7 – Hometime
And so, with one final opportunity to stuff myself silly at breakfast time, our week had come to an end. My travel connections meant that it was going to be quite an epic trip back home to Dorset, so I felt justified in over-indulging at the breakfast table one last time to steel myself for the journey ahead.
It had been a great week, and the wonderful skiing had been only part of it. The silence and beauty of the forests, the food, the company, the wildlife, the saunas, the local characters we’d met – all had been important and memorable components of a very enjoyable trip.
While my ski technique still has a long way to go, it had improved a good deal during the week. And somewhere along the way on my 100km through the wilderness, I’d built leg muscles of steel to help me carry the extra kilo I’d put on.