Places

Nuuksio

An hour from Helsinki by train and bus, and it still feels like forest rather than a park. Lakes, cliffs, and enough paths that you can walk for four hours and see maybe six people. Busiest on Sunday afternoons in September, when everybody arrives at once for the mushrooms.

Go early. The car park by the main trailhead fills by half past nine at weekends, and the first two kilometres are the crowded ones.

Oulanka

The river, the fells and the best two days of walking I know in the country. The Karhunkierros long-distance route starts here; you do not need to do all of it, and the first day alone is worth the trip.

June is spectacular and June is also when the mosquitoes are at their most committed. Late August is the better compromise.

Koli

The view everybody photographs, and it is worth it anyway — the lake opens out below you in a way that photographs flatten and memory does not. The national park around it is small and popular; walk twenty minutes from the summit in any direction and it is not.

Sunrise from the top in summer is the thing to do, and it requires getting up at three, which sounds unreasonable until you are there.

Hossa

Quiet, even by Finnish standards. The oldest rock paintings in the region are on a lake you have to walk to, and the trail there crosses water in a way that is genuinely enjoyable rather than a chore. Fewer visitors than Koli by an order of magnitude.

The area was a fishing reserve for centuries, and the trails follow the old routes between the lakes, which is why they make sense in a way that modern paths sometimes do not.

How I choose

• How far is it from a car park, in hours of walking, before it stops feeling like a day trip.
• Whether there is water to cross, because places that need a boat stay quiet longer.
• What it is like in November, which is the honest test of whether a place is interesting or just photogenic.