Tips & links in our surroundings

To be honest:
The majority of our guests – once they have arrived here – hardly want to leave Urnatur for daytrips or other activities.
Just being here and enjoying the farm and the wood hermitage and its surroundings is often enoughBut: of course there are also a lot of nice places to visit and things to do in our surroundings and it is a pleasure for us to help you finding them! Here below is a list of links and tips.

A lot of great tips can be also found here: www.visitvattern.com

close neighborhood:

Östergötlands ullspinneri
A local wool spinning mill, sells yarn
and blankets of high quality
http://www.ullspinneriet.se/

Karin Langhardt, ceramist

Hiking to Urnatur

Best way to get here is by hiking :)
Hike to us from either for example Omberg or Trehörna. The trail Östgötaleden passes our place and you will see a variety of landscapes if you walk both directions and make a stop-over at Urnatur. On Omberg we suggest you can stay over at beautiful Ombergs Turisthotell.

Close surroundings within biking distance: 10-20km

Ödeshög is a wonderful and perfect place for biking!
Ödeshög municipality is divided by the highway into the plains and the Holaved forest, all within biking distance.
Urnatur and its farm Sjögetorp is within the Holaved forest landscape.
The plains, an agricultural landscape, is bordered by the big Vättern lake, the famous birdlake Tåkern and Omberg mountain.
You can visit a lot of small nature reserves with varying landscapes.
Churches: There are plenty of small villages with ancient churches from 12th century – like in Heda village.
there is a map with churches in Sweden – but unfortunately only in Swedish : http://www.kyrkokartan.se/
Lake Tåkern: naturrum Tåkern – A visitor centre, beautiful surroundings, birdlife, nice exhibition – great also for kids.
Open daily 10 am – 5 pm.
Ecopark Omberg: here find a map of Omberg ecopark and Omberg mountain.

A few words about the Holaved forest (Holaveden)

Here in the so called Holaved forest there is a unique hidden forest landscape with a cultural heritage of forest farmers with ancient cultural traditions. The forest area is close to Småland and extremely stony. This area  was the area of poor farmers, whereas the rich farmers lived in the plains. Also the forest area included forest owned collectively by surrounding farms, especially farms from the plains who did not have forest of their own nearby. It was meant to be the resource for fire wood, construction wood but also everything else you got from the woods like berries, mushrooms, material for crafts and tools etc. Today it is still collectively owned (it is called Lysing Häradsallmänning , ca 4000 ha) but most of the ancient forest is successively taken down by clear cuts and replaced by spruce or pine plantings. But still there are a few really special places hidden here in the forest.
Ancient landscape. As Sweden historically has been a poor country with few inhabitants, dominated by natural forest, it is important to emphasize that – compared to many other countries that actually don´t have ANY natural forest left, there are still spots with natural forest, but these are now endangered and probably gone within a decade (and replaced with spruce and pine plantings) besides a few tiny nature reserves – if Swedish forest industries continue to decide about the future of our forests.

Fishing

Östergtland is also a great place for fishing. The big lake Vättern in the west, the Baltic sea in the east and lots of lakes in between with great fishing. The foremost fish species are pike and perch, followed by bream, roach,, burbot, trout, pike-perch, …

You can get maps and more information at all tourist informations.

Hope this was any help :)