‘Everybody is connected to nature in Finland because everything is,’ Antti Harkonen, founder of a kayaking and adventure travel outfit says as he shows me where some of Scandinavia’s finest city kayaking routes kick off at Tampere’s Soutukeskus Venesatama (Rowing Centre). While the view north is towards the tree-flanked skyline of the country’s second city even, the panorama west pans out to Pyhäjärvi – one of the two vast snaking lakes bounding Tampere and a scene of island-flecked cobalt waters, conifer-clad shores and emptiness that seems to be Finland’s de facto late-summer vista whichever way you venture.

Helsinki, the picturesque capitol city of Finland, is known for its rugged and extensive coastal stretches along the Baltic Sea – all within easy reach of urban spaces. These beaches and rocky promenades are particularly popular with walkers. One of the best paths starts in Helsinki’s Market Square and follows the coast to Lölyly, which is not only famous for its sauna and for being the first FSC building in Finland.

‘Other countries have saunas, but nowhere has sauna culture like here in Finland. Elsewhere it’s a business model: in Finland it’s a way of life,’ says Alexander Markus Lembke, sitting in the yard outside the sauna where he works in Tampere, the Nordic nation’s second city and self-proclaimed ‘sauna capital of the world.’

It’s seven in the evening, early July, and I’m sitting on a jetty on the edge of a lake in eastern Finland, dressed only in a towel around my waist. Occasionally an agreeable waft of birch wood smoke drifts over my head from the sauna, located at the top of a short flight of wooden steps. The lake is settling into a glassy mirror, but the sun is still high in the warm northern sky.