Hiking in the Teijo National Park

My friend and I spent the first weekend of June hiking in the Teijo national park.

Established in 2015, Teijo is one of the more recent additions to the list of Finnish national parks. The park is located in Salo, southwest Finland approximately 1.5 hour drive from Helsinki.

This was our first hike in Teijo together. I had visited the park multiple times before it was established as a national park.

We split the hike into three days:

Arrival

We arrived at Miilunummi on Friday evening. The Miilunummi parking space is located at the center of the park and enables easy access to the northern and southern parts of the park.

We decided to head to Kalasuntti for the night. It’s located 2.5 km from the parking space to the north. It was hot, and the air started to buzz with mosquitos.

The Kalasuntti lean-to-shelter is on a small island and is accessible by cable ferries. Many hikers had set up their tents when we arrived. The weekend marked the end of the school year in Finland.

Tired from driving and the mosquitos’ buzzing, we decided to go to sleep early.

First day

On our travel plan, the first day was reserved for hiking in the northern part of the park. We followed the Sahajärvi route clockwise and made a detour to Nenusta for the Nenustannokka viewpoint.

After eating lunch, we joined the Sahajärvi route again and followed it back to the Kalasuntti crossroads. We headed back to our Miilunummi for water refill.

There are two drinking water points in Teijo: to the north in Onnelannummi and to the south Matildanjärvi. I had packed 10 liters of drinking water to the car since our route didn’t include the Onnelannummi water point. We drank about half of the water that I had packed. If you intend to dring the lake water, you need a water purification system.

We set up camp at Endal after walking 15 km in total.

Second day and departure

We started hiking to the south towards Matildanjärvi. We stopped at the Teijo Nature Center to refill our water reserves and then followed the Matildanjärvi route clockwise. At Mikkossuo we started heading to the north and arrived at Miilunummi via Endal.

Mosquitos were more aggressive on the second day due to lack of wind and rainstorm approaching the area. We walked 10 km, but it felt more than that.

Initially we intended to visit Punassuo on our way to Helsinki but eventually decided not to.

Closing thoughts

There are many activities in Teijo in addition to hiking: biking, sailing and fishing (to name a few). On the next trip, I’m thinking combining hiking with sailing, for example, visiting the Isoholma island.

There are only two drinking water points. Either pack a water tank in the car, buy additional water from the Nature Center or bring a water filtering system with you.