Il Dolce Far Niente: Luukki

December 2012

The year 2012 started fresh and green. Did few day hikes on Nuuksio National Park:

On a cold Sunday saw sea smoke coming, the Baltic of Finland was about to freeze soon:

Soon in January we got lots of snow in the Southern Finland. Couldn't imagine proper winter without snow. Spent time on cross country skis and on snowshoes:

The whole year was shadowed by too many injuries. The first one, a pain on heel, interrupted my cross country skiing and snowshoeing season. February I spent on a Gym, mostly on cycling with a stationary bicycle.

Visited the Korkeasaari Zoo in Helsinki in early March and met an Owl:

In mid March took a city break at Amsterdam. Did lots of cycling there. Interesting place:

End of March did a two day hiking trip to Nuuksio National Park, to test a Bivy Bag for the very first time. Positive experience:

At Easter time, there was some Spring feeling in the air:

April started to be busy time at outdoors; started a bicycle commuting to work, a sea kayaking season. Rivers got rid of ice, allowing paddlers to enjoy watery rapids:

Early May did a two days hiking trip to Liesjärvi National Park. Lakes and forest, nice place:

May was filled with cycling, paddling, running and orienteering. Such a busy month.

Did also lots was birdwatching, as well as observing nature in general. Nice places visited were Karkali and Uutela Nature Reserve areas:

Bought a new bicycle for commuting. It inspired even more cycling, which took quite a slice of spare time.

In June did some paddling trips, one to Lill Skorvan island on Kirkkonummi:

Orienteering has been one of most favourites, Jukolan Viesti preseting its glory:

Made the 2nd paddling trip to a brand new Selkämeri National Park in June. Such nice remote islands, a great place for paddling:

Midsummer time everything gets in bloom. It's also a busy time for animals:

In early July, did some hiking trips in Switzerland (blog posts still to come!):

Back in Finland, did a combined, two days, paddling and hiking trip to Repovesi National Park. Again, magnificent place:

Cycling stole lots of my spare time from paddling. A cycling trip to the city of Porvoo was nice, but then BANG, fell off the bike and hurt my wrist (which later proved to be a broken bone):

Hand hurt a lot, but the highlight of the whole year was already in sight, 9 days paddling trip to Gulf of Finland National Park. Did the trip even it hurt quite a lot. That's not all, fell down during the trip and got a broken rib. Ibuprofein saved the trip.

Recovering from all, paddling had to wait. Filled spare time by cycling and birdwatching.

Autumn had arrived. Birds were migrating, heading towards south. Autumn foliage brought awesome colours in nature.

Finally, did some paddling trips, one to Torra Lövö island:

Finished paddling season earlier than usual. Again, cycling stole most of the time. Was a bit lazy, so day hikes on weekends was about enough, like the one to Luukki:

In early December visited Utö island again. Such a great place, actually the whole archipelago is quite special and unique:

In December we got lots of snow, I mean a lot. White Christmas filled the land:

Now when writing this on New Year's Eve, temperature stays above zero centigrades, outdoor activities have to wait.

Some statistics about my outdoor year 2012:

Did altogether about 5200 km, from where

3700 km of cycling
600 km of paddling
300 km of running/orienteering
600 km of hiking/walking/snowshoeing

The best photo I took during 2012? Although taken on artificial conditions (the zoo), I'll pick up this one (all of them in Picasa):

Happy New Year !

October 2012

Visited Luukki Nature Reserve and its Recreation Area a week ago.

Autumn time has been very wet in Southern Finland. There's been so much rain that ground have stopped to absorb water, leaving it on the ground. If you'd like to step off from the road while on nature, better to prepare getting your feet wet. Or alternatively, wear high rubberboots and make sure where ever you walk there's less water than your boots allow to keep your feet dry.

That's exactly how I prepared to go for a walk at Luukki, about 20km north from Helsinki. Actually, I wanted to see how much there was water in the forest.

Luukki area has been my favourite area for outdoor activities for a long time. It's near, it's far enough, it's real outdoors, there's many type of nature and so on. It's really easy to reach there by public transport not to mention by car/bicycle etc.

Weather was lousy, very cloudy and such a high humidity that it felt like a constant light rain. Took a DSLR with me, wanted to record the state of nature on a wet and cloudy Autumn day. As I was an owner of only few kit lenses I knew that taking proper photos handheld with them was difficult. Didn't want to carry a tripod, which would have helped a lot though. Decided to take only one lens, a 35mm f1.8 prime lens, which hopefully would give a bit more playground for a handheld photography.

Decision to wear rubberboots proved to be right almost immediately after leaving the Luukki parking lot. There seemed to be water everywhere in the forest, crossing nature paths here and there.

It did look so fresh green in the forest. Bright green. Fantastic view despite a miserable weather. As a matter of fact, it's been on my mind a long time of how to capture a badly looking view of nature into a photo. It seems to be a much more difficult task than always trying to take good looking nature photos.

As usual, there were lots of other people on nature paths, too. Families with children, with dogs, a group of blind people with their guided dogs, runners, speed walkers. You named it.

Below are some photos I captured there, which explain the state of the day and period as I saw it. Lack of tripod is quite visible in most of these photos (as well as a lack of proper lens). Changing a photographer was out of the question.

Walked map by GPS, some 10km route (view in a larger map):