Visiting R 151 29
This post is part of a bigger trip I made through Scandinavia with focus on Norway.
A nice tip
The internet offers a lot of opportunities to find spots you would normally oversee easily. This is one of them. In one Facebook group about North Cape trips one was on her way by bicycle and posting regularly about it. In one of the posts she said that she found a spot where somebody collected cloudberries and that there is a good café to have them as jam with pancakes.
Cloudberries? Never heard of them. After checking online I found out that they don’t grow in my region. Just some grow in Northern Germany but are strictly protected there. Totally different here. You are allowed to pick them. Now I was curious to find out more.
Looking for cloudberries
Cloudberries like it wet. This is why they like to grow in mire areas. That specific mire with the hard to pronounce name for foreigners has been rebuild. 25 hectares of drained mire were restored here in 2013. You can still see the trees that used to be here before. Half of the mires in Finland have been drained in the past leading to a decline in typical plant and animal species and now there are attempts to get at least some of them back.
Because everything is wet here there is a duckboard trail. Not only does it keep your feet dry it also protects nature. It leads to a bird-watching tower next to a lake. Yet, you have to choose. The best time for birds is not the best time for cloudberries.
Cloudberries grow around 10 to 25 cm (4 to 10 inches) high. So, you need to look on the ground for them. Unfortunately, almost of them had been picked already when I came. I just found a very small number of them. However, I would see a lot more during my trip later on.
Yummy break
A common usage for cloudberries is jam. And the tip for getting them close by is at Harianna’s (no advertisement, I just really liked it there). It is a small cafe next to the road. I had a nice chat with the owner (Hari) about German soccer while waiting for my pancake. His wife’s name is Anna. And this is how they came up with the name of the location: Harianna.
You can sit outside in a kind of winter garden at a lake to enjoy your food. I found it interesting that the “silverware” was fully compostable.
While sitting there you can make up your own story why it looks like Neptune has forgot something at the lake.
Some travel tips (from 2021)
- There is a small parking area directly at the street across the entrance to the mire.
- According to the website the best bird watching season is end of May until July. Seems like the cloudberry season is more end of July, beginning of August.
- Take proper shoes with you. Even though you have the boards it can be a little muddy around the bird-watching tower.
- Check if the café has open, it might be closed between October and May.
- The café can be very popular. If you are unlucky you have a bus load of people in front of you.