Our Route Map

The red route takes you from behind our cabins to our reindeer herding corral, just 2km away. Here you can see the structures that the reindeer herders use when they collect their reindeer from the forest. It is only used by them twice a year, at mid-summer and mid-winter, but you can look in and around the fences, or make a campfire in the nearby shelter and have a winter picnic up here in this rare setting. It's easy to walk on the packed down trails in normal winter boots but you'll need to take snowshoes with you if you want to walk around in the deeper snow around the corral.

​

The green route takes you northwest from our kennel up the the Old Niesi Road, which is an old horse cart track used over a hundred years ago to get to the village of Niesi 22km away. After 1km the green route turns off to the left and directly south along Sunshine Boulevard, which lines up with the first brief sunrise at around midday after our month-long polar night. Then after a couple of bends it turns southwest along the Flagstone Line, which is an old mapping baseline, called a "paasilinja" in Finnish, which was made by cutting long straight lines through the forest throughout Finland. A "paasi" is also a big stone, or a pile of flat stones, which was used as a navigational aid like a cairn, hence the term flag stone. The end of the green route crosses the southern tip of the Lower Peatbog finishing at the "Spaghetti Junction"!

​

From "Spaghetti Junction" it's possible to go a number of ways: south to the river, west to "Narnia", northwards to get to the lower peatbog, or east over Honey Hill or to the little lake.

​

The blue route, which also starts at the cabins, follows the eastern shore of Korvala lake, climbs over Little Big Hill and Honey Hill, and then meets the other routes at Spaghetti Junction. From here it continues southwards and takes you down to the Ala-Säynäjäjoki river where there is a bridge over a narrower, faster flowing part of the river which offers pretty views up and downstream. If you're lucky, you might catch sight of an otter or a white-throated dipper on the riverbanks. Just before the bridge, the route has a turning to the left and then another to the right, making the Lower and Upper River Routes. The Lower River Route takes you in a loop downstream, around and back to Honey Hill and Little Big Hill. The Upper River Route takes you upstream along a less used path towards an area of the forest called "Narnia". However, it's easier to get to Narnia by following the purple route from the Spaghetti Junction.

​

The purple route takes you westwards from Spaghetti Junction to the turning down to "Narnia", an untouched, ancient and magical part of the forest off to the south side of the route, full of big old trees hundreds of years old, clinging to the steep river bank. Here, the head of the river flows over gentle rapids at Luusuankoski, which are also ice-free. You'll need to take snowshoes along with you to explore this area, as Narnia is very much "off-piste". However, if you decide to continue along the purple route for another half a kilometre, it will take you round to a fork in the route. The left-hand fork will take you northwards via the Little Marsh up to the reindeer herding corral and the right-hand fork will take you along the old path that the children who lived by the Ala-Säynäjä lake used to walk to school.

​

The School Route turns into the Upper Corral Route, which is part of the red route. From here you can go back towards the Flagstone Line. However, 200m on from where the School Route joins the Upper Corral Route it forks again - if you take the the right-hand path you will be on the orange route, called the Lower Corral Route, which crosses over the Flagstone Line at Red Rock and continues around to the Westside of the lake along what we affectionally call the "Rock 'n' Roll" route because of all the ups and downs! From here it's just a short way back to the cabins.

​

The yellow routes weave their way through all the other routes and connect up all the peatbogs: the Upper Peatbog, the Little Marsh, the Lower Peatbog and the Straight Line over to the last peatbog and our Little Lake. Here a "kota" sits next to an ancient reindeer hunting pit from the days before reindeer herding started. This is another nice spot to have a picnic :)