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“It’s going to rain - pull over to that island.” As Heikki warns me, I peer over one shoulder to see a bank of dark cloud menacingly close, and I can feel the temperature beginning to drop. In the normal run of things, I wouldn’t let a spot of rain put me off anything. But here in Finnish Lakeland, the summer temperature has been topping 30 degrees, and is running through a fairly predictable cycle of extreme heat in the first part of the day, then breaking with a thunderstorm. But getting caught out in the middle of a lake in a canoe is somewhat different. So I put my back into the paddling, and we pull the canoe ashore, turn it over and crawl underneath just as the first few spots of rain splatter around us.

After a terrific downpour, the storm is over as quickly as it began, and we return to paddling along the lake, although now a chilly wind has sprung up, which if nothing else succeeds in getting me to paddle a bit more earnestly.

Finnish Lakeland is a popular tourist area, and British visitors will know Savonlinna, the main town, with its beautiful medieval castle, world-renowned for its annual opera festival. But to the north is an area not so well known - even to the Finns - Saimaa Lakeland, and its jewel in the crown, the Kolovesi National Park, this year celebrating ten years since its formation. This is a beautiful archipelago of wooded rocky islands, and unlike other parts of the Finnish lake district, here they’re characterised by sheer cliffs rising forty metres above the lake.

The forests are ancient, and there’s evidence that man has been here for some time, with rock paintings dating back 5,000 years. But as they say in Finland, “the nature” is what counts, and Kolovesi is home to one of the world’s most endangered mammals, the Saimaa Ringed Seal. Motor boats are banned within the park area in order to protect them, so the only way you can visit, in the summer at least, is either by rowing or paddling!

The starting point of my Finnish canoe odyssey along the “Seal Trail” is the monastery at Valamo, the only Orthodox monastery in the Nordic countries. It was originally in Karelia, but the monks decamped to here when the 1939 winter war put Karelia into Russian hands. You can spend the night here in simple but comfortable rooms, and it’s one of the few places I’ve stayed where what one might loosely describe as a curfew comes into effect at 9 o’clock in the evening! Noisy pursuits are forbidden, and with the day visitors departed in their coaches, you have the place to yourself, which certainly enhances the feeling of tranquillity.

Paddling a canoe isn’t difficult, but it’s one of those activities which leaves you with the feeling that your body has rediscovered long forgotten muscles. My first day covers a mere ten kilometres, but I end up feeling as though I’ve been squeezed out of a toothpaste tube. Even so, I guess I’m lucky. I’ve been teamed up with canoe guide Heikki. At around six feet eight, and built like the proverbial brick privy, he decides to swap the traditional single paddle in favour of a double paddle more commonly used for kayaking. This is roughly equivalent to being turbo-charged, and probably accounts for our being able to break away from the rest of the group with comparative ease.

It’s during one such moment that I’m privileged to catch sight of a Saimaa seal. We’re paddling past a rocky headland, when I spot the dark shape of his head as he pops up for a look around. “This is his fishing ground,” Heikki informs me. The seal is visible for a minute or so, and then he's gone.

That evening, in the heart of the Kolovesi National Park, we camp on one of the islands, our tents pitched in the trees not far from the water’s edge. It’s true natural wilderness, with a peace of spiritual proportions, but it comes at a price. The mosquitoes here clearly regard me as a delicacy. My most potent and toxic repellents prove utterly useless against them, and I’m smothered in angry red lumps. Canoe guide Matti Siivonen lends me a stick of some kind of anti-histamine treatment, thinking probably that he’d have enough left over when I’d finished to last him the rest of the summer. I use it all in the space of two days!

It’s not just the mosquitoes that are after me, either. As I’m enjoying a beer in the pub in Oravi, a large and rather drunk Finn sitting on the bench next to me puts his arm around me - massaging my back. Foolishly I think he’s merely taken, in a vaguely vodka kind of way, with the cuddly fleece jacket I’m wearing. Then he's squeezing my shoulder, and suddenly his other hand is on my thigh. “He wants you to go back to his for place a sauna,” my guide translates helpfully. “Tell him I’m hot enough already,” I reply, struggling from his grasp.

But I’d be hard pressed to top the game of darts I played in broad daylight at 11pm on the side of a cabin at Kermankoski. The cabin owner demonstrates the Finnish style of darts, throwing from five metres, so the style employed is more akin to throwing a javelin. I confess my prowess at the oche has never been anything to shout about, and I’m lucky to hit the side of the cabin, let alone the board! Then he grabs the board from the wall, holds it in front of him, and invites me to throw the darts. This seems vaguely suicidal to me, so neither wishing to upset him, nor indeed to maim him, I lob them as gently as possible, achieving my best grouping of the evening in the centre of the board. Sometimes it's better when the target moves!

Matti Siivonen’s canoe safari along the “Seal Trail” provides a nice mix, not just between the wilderness and civilisation - it includes a visit to the attractive wooden church on a hilltop at Heinavesi - but in the type of canoeing, too. Sometimes you’re paddling along rivers or canals - you even have one or two locks to contend with - at others you’re paddling across open water. For me, the more intimate experience with the shoreline and brushes with the wildlife was what made the whole trip. And if you find yourself getting tired, Matti will happily start up the outboard on his boat (outside Kolovesi NP) and give you a tow.

Accommodation varies, too, from small hotels and guest houses to tents and sleeping bags when you camp in Kolovesi National Park. And of course, since you’d expect nothing less in Finland, virtually everywhere you have the opportunity to soothe away the aches of paddling from your body at the end of the day with the Finnish national pastime - the sauna.

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