The lake
Four hundred metres down the path and ninety metres below the villa, with a boathouse, a jetty and a sauna that is lit at five.
The water
Kallavesi is 473 square kilometres and the fourth largest lake in Finland, which is a competitive category. It freezes in the first half of December in a cold year and the first week of January in a mild one, and it goes out around the end of April. The ice is thick enough to walk on from about the middle of January; the sign at the jetty says when, and the sign is right because the man who writes it drills a hole first.
Summer
The water reaches 20 degrees by the middle of July and will hold it until the end of August. The jetty is deep enough to dive off at the end and not in the middle, and somebody will tell you that before you find out.
The sauna
Wood fired, at the shore, lit at five every evening and hot by six. Mixed hours are six until eight. After that it is quiet hours and people go down alone or in twos. The lake is the cold plunge, all year, including the part of the year when there is a hole cut in the ice for it.
Puijo
The hill behind rises to 232 metres, which is 150 above the lake, and the tower on top adds another 75. The path from the back of the villa reaches the top in fifty minutes with one steep section. There is a restaurant up there that turns. We are not going to pretend that is not worth seeing once.
The city
Four kilometres north east. The market square has a covered hall from 1902 and a stall that sells kalakukko, which is fish baked inside a rye loaf and which is the single most Kuopio thing there is. The bus to town passes the end of the gravel at twenty past the hour.
Seasons
- December to March – snow from late November, minus ten to minus twenty-five, and the lake white and walkable from mid January.
- April and May – the ice goes, the ground thaws, and for about three weeks everything is mud and nothing is pretty.
- June to August – light almost all night in June, warm water from July, and mosquitoes in the second half of June that are not a joke.
- September and October – the best weeks of the year. Birch yellow, air clear, water still swimmable in the first fortnight.
