The national parks of Finnish Lapland are the ideal place to escape the world, and a few years ago I badly needed to. I wanted to switch off from work, from stress, from modernity itself, and few things empty my mind like being on a horse. So I decided a riding holiday was the answer.
I sat down at the computer to weigh up the options, and on the French site RandoCheval I read about riding through the wild forests of Finnish Lapland, up near the Russian border. Perfect. The packaged versions were a little beyond my budget, so I dug around, found the phone number of a family who run trips like this in Oulanka National Park, and called to book. I joined a group leaving two days later, booked a flight to Kuusamo via Helsinki, packed my bag, and switched into holiday mode.
This is one of the most extraordinary things I have ever done, and if you ride and you are drawn to real wilderness and a good measure of discomfort, I cannot recommend it enough. Here is how it went, and how to do it yourself.
The Oulanka National Park
I have not ridden the other parks of Finnish Lapland, so I cannot compare, but I fell head over heels for Oulanka.
It lies between Kuusamo and Salla, right on the Russian border, among endless luminous green valleys, crystal streams, white sandbanks, peat bogs, pine forests, and reindeer, lynx, bears and elk. During the midnight-sun weeks, to the delight of every hiker, it also has billions of mosquitoes and horseflies. Come prepared.
I live in a national park myself, but the Cinque Terre is human-made and densely populated. Here nature is the empress, and people honour it with genuinely exemplary management. The trails and the many free wilderness campsites are immaculately kept and built only from natural materials: braziers everywhere, always clean, with stacks of firewood free for anyone; sauna huts every few kilometres; the traditional triangular laavu shelters lined with reindeer skins, open on one side to the fire; and boats to cross the rivers. There are also some classic paid campsites with the traditional shiny red-painted wooden houses, mostly on islands along the lakes and streams. Very romantic.
The park visitor centre is an excellent starting point, whether your holiday involves trekking, rafting, fishing, or simply drifting between one sauna and the next. It is worth a stop to understand the region, the Sámi heritage, and the biodiversity before you set off.
A note on the border, and on now
I should be honest that the world has changed since I took this trip. When I rode here, the Russian border was simply a strange, quiet line through the forest, something we crossed near and remarked on. Since then Finland has joined NATO, and the land border with Russia has been closed. So this is no longer a “ride between Finland and Russia” in any real sense, and I would not frame it as one today.
What remains, and remains wonderful, is the Finnish side: the Oulanka park and the Bear Trail, which are what this trip was always really about. Before booking any trip in this region now, check the current advice on which areas near the border are open, and go with a local operator who knows exactly where you can and cannot ride.
Riding the Bear Trail
At the little Kuusamo airport, Erkki met me, along with Karita and her magnificent Weimaraner, Zeus. We drove to the wooden cottage on the lake, beside the stables, which would be our base for the first night. There I met the rest of the group: Faiz and Sarah, a Malaysian couple living in London, Thierry from Lyon, and Annah from Zurich. We had dinner around a bonfire on the lakeshore, soup and sausages, which turned out to be the foundation of nearly every meal that followed. Over dinner Erkki worked out which horse suited whom, and I was introduced to Roisto, my spark of a Finnhorse and my companion for the days ahead.
The next morning we woke at dawn, with the sun already high, where it would stay until well past midnight. Breakfast was hearty and mostly savoury, and here I made my first mistake: I had only tea and a slice of toast with butter and honey, and was ravenous by mid-morning with two hours still to ride before lunch. From the next day I ate like everyone else.
Leaving the stables meant leaving civilisation, its excesses and its comforts, behind. We spent eleven days along the Karhunkierros, the Bear Trail, roughly 80 kilometres of it, linking other routes as we went. A paradise for bears, lynx, reindeer and elk, and for me. We rode five or six hours a day, crossing the Arctic Circle, through the quartzite gorges, the Kiutaköngäs rapids, the waterfalls and the river Kitkajoki, up to the peaks along the Ruka trails, a smart ski resort I still dream of visiting in the depths of the polar winter. We passed hikers, fishermen and rafting groups, visited sledge-dog farms, and were carried away by view after view.
Having left so suddenly, I had not trained at all. By the last kilometres of the first day I could have cried from sheer exhaustion, and there was hysterical group laughter as we unsaddled, washed and fed the horses before we could so much as stretch our own legs. Cheerful, desperate collective delirium. The next morning I discovered that necks have muscles too. The second day went better, perhaps because I was already beginning to forget my ordinary life.
We spent days without seeing a car, without electricity or running water. A true return to nature: waking and diving into the river, lighting the fire for breakfast, then riding off between complicit smiles, making kebabs on branches cut from the woods at lunch, filling our bottles in the streams, taking a sauna deep in the impossibly green forest and then plunging into an icy lake amid laughter and childish pranks, and finally dinner at night under a burning sky.
It is a holiday in the Garden of Eden. Hard to adjust to on the first day, and impossible to leave by the last.
The Finnish sauna
The traditional Finnish sauna is everywhere here, and open to everyone. It is a genuine institution, a daily ritual learned from earliest childhood, and it was what rescued my muscles and put me back in the saddle each morning.
They are quiet, dimly lit spaces smelling of birch, whose branches are bound into small bundles, vasta, used to beat the skin gently and stimulate the circulation. Tradition says you stay in the heat for fifteen minutes, then plunge into cold water, and repeat three times. The first time I went into the river I thought I would sink, paralysed by the pain, because icy water genuinely does hurt. But day after day I got used to it, and came to love even a short swim.
And yes: in the Finnish sauna, everyone is naked. Best to know that in advance.
Practical tips for a riding holiday in Lapland
This is not a holiday for everyone, both because not everyone rides and because the sheer adaptation required would be a nightmare rather than a rest for many people. But if you are anything like me, I could not recommend it more. Some honest notes to enjoy it properly:
- Pack light, in a soft bag you can fold and stow, with its contents, into the leather saddlebags. My full method is in packing light.
- Beyond your riding kit, bring a sleeping bag and a microfibre towel, t-shirts and underwear for the number of days, something comfortable for the evening, and a swimsuit.
- Bring insect repellent (essential), sunscreen, a balm for aching joints, hand sanitiser, an eye mask (there are only about two hours of red twilight around 1 to 3am and then the sun is high again, and the Finns wait all year for this light, so nobody darkens their windows), a multi-tool, a water bottle or two, and a camera with spare batteries.
- Do not do as I did: get fit before you go. Even a few weeks of preparation will spare you that first brutal day.
- Treat any price as indicative. I paid around €900 for twelve days all-inclusive back then, which was wonderful value, but that was years ago; ask the operator for current rates.
A few words that served me well: kiitos (thank you), ole hyvä (you’re welcome), hyvää huomenta (good morning), hyvää yötä (good night), hyvä poika (good boy, much-used with Roisto), hyttyset (mosquitoes), keskiyön aurinko (midnight sun), and the vital olen nälkäinen (I’m hungry).
Hyvää lomaa, have a wonderful holiday.
More horse-riding holidays
This was one of the great rides of my life, and it sits alongside the others I have written about. If riding is your way of seeing the world too:
- El Rocío: a different Andalusia, where horses come first
- Horse-riding holidays in Argentina
- Five unforgettable horse-riding and ranch holidays
And for how I plan trips like this one, alone and independently, see my guide to independent travel.
FAQ
Yes. Multi-day riding holidays run in the wilderness around the Oulanka National Park near Kuusamo, following stretches of the Karhunkierros or Bear Trail through forest, rivers and fells. They are typically all-inclusive, small-group trips run by local families, with riders spending several hours a day in the saddle and camping or staying in simple cabins, so a reasonable level of riding fitness helps.
Summer, roughly June to August, when the trails are clear and the midnight sun gives almost endless daylight. That same season brings mosquitoes and horseflies, so strong repellent is essential. The upside is being able to ride, sauna and swim late into a night that never fully darkens.
A solid level of riding is important, since these trips involve five to six hours a day in the saddle over several consecutive days on varied terrain. You do not need to be an expert, but you should be comfortable at walk, trot and canter and, ideally, reasonably fit beforehand, as the first days are physically demanding if you are not used to long hours riding.
Very. Small-group riding holidays are an easy and sociable way to travel Lapland alone: you join a handful of other riders and guides, so you have company on the trail and independence the rest of the time. Finland is also safe, orderly and welcoming, which makes it a reassuring destination for a first solo adventure of this kind.
Karhunkierros, or Bear Trail, is one of Finland’s most famous wilderness routes, running around 80 kilometres through the Oulanka National Park near Kuusamo, close to the eastern border. Known for gorges, rapids, waterfalls, suspension bridges and rich wildlife including reindeer, elk and, occasionally, bears, it is walked by hikers and, in parts, ridden on horseback.
