Lake Trails
Explore the northern Näsi Lake Trail! On the route, you will get to see amazing scenery, taste locally grown food, enjoy culture and the peace of nature. You can make your trip easier by cruising some of the way with the Tarjanne steamship or by using the local trains. Cycling & Tampere Lake Region is a match made in heaven.
Municipalities on the route: Tampere, Ylöjärvi, Virrat, Ruovesi, Mänttä-Vilppula and Juupajoki, all offering tasty local services for cyclists.
Näsi Lake Trail has three core routes and many different travel tips built around the routes. Around the routes, we have selected services suitable for cyclists: restaurants, locally grown food, accommodation and everything interesting to see and experience. So it is easy for you to choose the best route and services for your own adventure.
We have selected a starting point for the routes to be the Mustalahti Harbour at Tampere, but you can hop on the routes wherever you want and use ships or trains some of the way.
Lenght: 146 km
Recommendation: 2-4 days or a day trip using the ship
Rantatie route follows the shoreside roads of the Lake Näsijärvi. The roads are peaceful and the scenery is beautiful throughout the route. The lake scenery from Terälahti to Kapee, West-Teisko’s hilly countryside roads and of course the Murole Canal are all highlights of the route. The Summer Cafe at the Murole Canal is at a beautiful location to enjoy a summer evening.
Lenght: 150 km
Recommendation: Full route 2-4 days, waypoints as a day trips or 1 night
Patruunan polku will introduce you to the northern side of the Lake Näsijärvi. Helvetinjärvi National Park, Runeberg’s Spring and the Serlachius museums in Mänttä-Vilppula can all be found on the route. The route is full of history and fascinating present day.
Patruunan polku combines Ruovesi, Virrat and Mänttä-Vilppula to an adventurous experience perfect for a 3 days trip, where every day has its own theme. Tarjanne Steamship is perfect on this route to make your trip easier.
Lenght: 310 km
Recommendation: For an active cyclist 2-3 days, as a culture trip 5-7 days
Karhunkaataja is the Grand Tour of the Näsijärvi Lake Trail. The length of the full route is about 310 kilometers, offering a challenge even for an active cyclist. The route has classic attractions such as the Helvetinjärvi National Park and the Ravine Lakes of Toriseva. You will get to know the art treasures of Mänttä-Vilppula and the island scenery of Ruovesi, which has inspired great Finnish artists such as Runeberg and Gallen-Kallela. The same inspiring and peaceful beauty of nature can still be found from there, if you just have the patience to stop for a while.
As already stated, the activity of the Hurstinen couple, who were the focus of the first part of “Supernatural Pyhä-Näsi”, was not a singular phenomenon, but a part of a long tradition of witchcraft in the Ruovesi region. In the second part of “Supernatural Pyhä-Näsi”, we take look at two other representatives of this continuum from the 1800s, Taneli Santala and Matti Mutila.
There is an abundance of stories of supernatural occurrences and people immersed in the occult – witches, sages, and healers – in the Pyhä-Näsi region. Especially such stories are linked to the area of Ruovesi and its neighbouring municipalities. In previous centuries, Ruovesi has been widely known for its witches, and this reputation has been exploited in later years – there is a Noitakäräjät (Witch court) -happening organized there every summer.
Right in the vicinity of the centre of Ruovesi lies an artist’s home thus far unknown to the larger public. The place in question is a house called Naapuri (neighbour), the home of writer-poet-artist Heikki Asunta (1904–1959) and his family, which is nowadays inhabited by the nephew of Heikki Asunta, Iivu – he, too, a legendary figure in his own field.
The region of Pyhä-Näsi played a significant role also in the life of perhaps the most notable Finnish sculptor of his time, Emil Wikström (1864–1942). Key locations of Wikström’s life can be found in several localities within Pyhä-Näsi, the most important being his home and studio Visavuori, which is situated in Sääksmäki village, a part of the city of Valkeakoski. Also, a numerous quantity of his public sculptures can be found in the area.
One of the most well known Finnish painters, Ellen Thesleff (1869–1954), spent a significant part of her life in the area of Pyhä-Näsi – in the village of Murole in Ruovesi, to be precise, where her family had a summer villa called Casa Bianca. In Murole, Thesleff painted the local milieu and people and also made murals for the near-by Pekkala manor. Casa Bianca is no more, but the beautiful scenery of Murolekoski that inspired Thesleff still remains, to be experienced by any culturally hungry traveller.
The first week of September overwhelmed us all by it´s consistant warmth. Well, here we are already in autumn and look at the benefits: no
The life of Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865–1931), at times dubbed even the national painter of Finland, is connected to the Pyhä-Näsi area in various ways. The best known of these connections is his wilderness atelier and home Kalela, which was built in Ruovesi in the middle of the 1890s, but traces of the artist can be found in Visuvesi, Mänttä-Vilppula, Keuruu, Tampere, and Sääksmäki, too.
I didn´t know much about I.K. Inha beforehand, but since I decided to start follow he´s footsteps around Virrat lakesites I definetly was interested to
Akaa
Juupajoki
Kangasala
Lempäälä
Mänttä-Vilppula
Nokia
Pälkäne
Pirkkala
Ruovesi
Tampere
Valkeakoski
Vesilahti
Virrat
Ylöjärvi
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