Northern Savonia – Owlnature

Two and a half weeks in Eastern Finland

I spent two and a half weeks in Eastern Finland, in the municipality of Rautavaara in the region of Northern Savonia, in August and in September. It’s my boyfriend’s home region and I was travelling with him and our two cats. His family has an old house there in Rautavaara, no one lives in the house anymore, it’s just for summertime visits nowadays, and that’s the place we stayed as well. It’s always about an eight hour’s drive from our home to Rautavaara, and the same back of course. – Always worth the travel.

I didn’t take pictures of, like, everything, but naturally I did ‘get caught up in some things’, and the result is this blog post here now. 🙂 I also took some pictures for our, mine and Owlnature‘s, Instagram (owlnatureleena), and the real Instagram widget has, by the way, (finally :p ) been on the sidebar of my blog for some time now as well.

By the lake Keyritty, just outside the centre of Rautavaara. It was a summery day. So calm, beautiful… just stunning! And it was completely silent here and everywhere we went. 🙂

There were many dragonflies flying and enjoying the sunshine by the house on many days. Here’s two of them.

By another lake on some other day. This is called Tiilikanselkä.

There are actual creeks in the forest, I’m not sure if this is one of them, or is this just some ditch…? Beautiful water areas in the forests, too, anyway.

I went mushroom hunting and all I could find was poisonous monkshood. ;p In this one forest I found monkshood in the wild for the first time.

But we did find a lot of mushrooms, too, during our trip. Here’s one penny bun mushroom or cep or porcino/porcini or boletus edulis mushroom…

And here’s our biggest amount of yellowfoot mushrooms or winter mushrooms or funnel chanterelles or cantharellus/craterellus tubaeformis mushrooms…

In addition to cooking with mushrooms we enjoyed bilberries (or blueberries), lingonberries and crowberries in the forests.

Another lake again. I was on a ridge. There are lakes on either side of the ridge. And there are many ridges in Rautavaara area, fairly small, beautiful… with lakes, forests and swamps.

A creek in the forest, so clear you can see the bottom.

By Tiilikanselkä again, we went there actually three times during our trip. 🙂

And river flows…

…and flows. Until next time. 🙂

-Leena

The cold fun Eastern Finland in January

Now the second blog post about our wintry trip to Metsäkartano Youth and Wilderness Centre in the municipality of Rautavaara, in the region of Northern Savonia in the Eastern Finland in mid-January. The first blog post can be found here.

This is a peat hut. It is one of the best places to go and light a campfire when it is about minus 30 degrees Celsius outside. Kind of under earth the peat hut is. We went there skiing one evening. A campfire is so vital at those kind of temperatures.

Outside our holiday apartment again.

The silence is something so special at Metsäkartano, the place is surrounded by wilderness. When you are completely silent and still yourself, you can’t hear absolutely anything. Occasionally just the twinkle of the falling snow on the pine trees and spruces. So peaceful and relaxing. Nature really loves you.

On the frozen lake. On the left can be seen the main building of Metsäkartano, in the middle is our holiday house and on the left another holiday house.

Metsäkartano has the EU Eco-label, it was the first travel resort to get it in Finland. The place is also very international with its both aspects – youth work and nature travel.

This sight made me even happier. A circle of joy made by a peppy dog. 🙂 I can like see the brisk dog coming galloping and making the circle there and continuing his way forward.

Frozen marsh Labrador tea or northern Labrador tea or wild rosemary. It still had the lovely and original scent, I tested.

The best colours through my camera this winter. 🙂

So this was our winter trip. Now still waiting the spring to actually come here in Finland, there’s still quite a lot of snow on the ground here in southwestern Finland, too.

-Leena

It was cold, cold ,cold, in the Eastern Finland, in January

With this post we’ll go back to mid-January. We were on holiday at Metsäkartano Youth and Wilderness Centre in the municipality of Rautavaara, in the region of Northern Savonia in the Eastern Finland. We stayed there for a week. I have photo glimpses for two blog posts, so here’s the first one.

This was my morning coffee view in our holiday apartment. Loved it! 🙂 A view with woods and a frozen lake to be seen behind it. The name of the lake is Ylä-Keyritty.

This is the same view, but from the terrace of the apartment.

It’s about an eight hour’s drive from our home in Satakunta to Metsäkartano, but it’s really worth the drive. We had been at Metsäkartano once before, two years ago. In fact, we stayed in the same holiday apartment then, too. The municipality of Rautavaara itself we visit every year, especially in the summertime, because my boyfriend’s family has a summer place there.

This is the house we stayed in. There are three holiday apartments in this house, our apartment was in the middle – you can see smoke coming out of our chimney there. We were the only ones in the house at that time. 🙂

Here’s the front door of our apartment. The name of the apartment is Vadelma – Raspberry in English (by the way metsä – forest and kartano – estate or mansion). There are also our skis – we were cross-country skiing there, at the temperatures of minus 25 to minus 30 degrees Celsius. I love skiing! We would have gone skiing even more there, but it really was a bit too cold to enjoy it that much. 😀

The temperatures never rose above minus 25 degrees Celsius In Rautavaara at that time. Mostly it was close to minus 30 degrees Celsius, but even more in the night-time. The record was (it also was a record in Finland at that night) minus 38 degrees Celsius. At that night we went to sauna and came outside to this front door from there to cool down a bit. It was an experience! I had never been in such cold temperatures before. The whole trip was such an experience…

This is the main building of Metsäkartano seen when standing in front of our holiday home. I love the old-style wooden fence.

The living room of our apartment.

There’s different kinds of accommodation options at Metsäkartano, we stayed in an apartment which has two floors and at least six beds in total. The apartment is spacious but cosy, with a fully equipped open kitchen and a living room with a heat-storing fireplace.

The kitchen. I took the photo so that our dishes and rubbish can’t be seen on the other side of the kitchen. :p But there’s also a nice dishwasher in the kitchen!

This is a part of the ceiling in the sauna in the apartment. A lovely starry ceiling! 🙂 And the sauna has a wood-burning stove. I love wood-heated saunas, they are so atmospheric.

Our cats were also travelling with us. It’s possible to take your pets into many of the holiday apartments at Metsäkartano, but there’s also an apartment suitable for people who are allergic to furry animals. Our cats already are experienced travellers – they are accustomed to sleeping in the car.

My second blog post about our trip will have more photos and feelings taken outdoors. 🙂

-Leena