Day 5: Saariselkä

Once we'd had dinner last night, we went out for a night-time walk around Saariselkä. We didn't see any northern lights but the sky was only partially clouded over, so we did have some beautiful views of the stars at times. And as we were making our way back to the apartment, we caught sight of the hill we'd been climbing up earlier in the day. We didn't quite make it up as far as those houses which you can see lit up, but we weren't far off  

It was another cold day when we woke up on Wednesday morning; the thermometer suggested it was around minus 10. The sky was a little bit clearer than it has been and when we set out on our walk it was clear enough to get a view towards some hills further in the distance.

As I think I said the other day, it was hard to find much information about winter walking trails around Saariselkä online. At least, hard to find anything in English.

But one of the sites where I had managed to find a little information suggested that there was an easy winter walking trail from Saariselkä towards a place called Laanila.

We set off through Saariselkä to the place where I thought(/hoped) the trail was going to start, and luckily we managed to find it without too much difficulty  

It was a nice wide path through the forest - as wide as a road at times.

There was a little bit of uphill but overall it was much easier to walk on than the path we'd been following yesterday.

The track led us south of the main village of Saariselkä, through some residential areas.

I got the impression that these might be the leafy suburbs of Saariselkä

There were certainly plenty of trees around.

Lots and lots of trees!

We were enjoying the scenery so much that I lost track of how far we'd gone; it turned out to  be quite a long walk.

When we eventually arrived in Laanila, it wasn't much of a metropolis; the highlight was this bridge.

Never mind, it was a fun walk and so it wasn't any hardship to retrace our steps.

On the way back we spotted a few different things. There was this tree, full of little birds (I think the people who lived in the nearby house were feeding them!)...

...and these cars, which were so buried in snow I can only assume the owners weren't planning on driving them any time soon!!

By the time we were back in Saariselkä we'd walked about 6 miles so it definitely felt like we'd made the most of today's daylight