Local tourism | Here is the best swimming beach in Uusimaa – an Espoo man has done an incredible job of research

Any more a few dozen beaches, and a person from Espoo Tony Hagerlund has been to all the swimming beaches in Uusimaa.

In total, he has visited more than 300 Finnish beaches, photographed them and evaluated them on their website. Let’s reveal right away the personal favorite of the beach collector: it is Espoo’s Kivenlahti beach.

“In my Baywatch youth, I was there as a lifeguard. The year must have been 1996,” says Hagerlund.

Hagerlund has previously become known to the readers of Helsingin Sanomat as a “solar panel guru”, when he followed for a year income from his solar panel.

Hagerlund is an urban activist and politician, whose interest is by no means limited to solar panels and beaches: on his website, he also presents, for example, mansions in the capital region, fitness stairs and artificial ice, as well as schools and kindergartens in Espoo. The positions of trust take him to the latter, as Hagerlund is a member of the growth and learning board of the city of Espoo.

Hagerlund says he has more ideas than he has time to implement them. At the beaches, he is fascinated by the everyday locality and history.

“I’m not only interested in which is the prettiest beach, but also which is the fifth prettiest. How about a thousand? And where do you go the least?”

Espoo’s Kivenlahti beach is one of Espoo’s most popular. Picture: Tony Hagerlund

Informal Hagerlund, who describes himself as a tourist guide, tells HS his tips for spending a summer day in the capital region.

In Espoo, he recommends heading to Myllyjärvi. The green and rocky area on the edge of the Nuuksio highlands hides a surprise.

“When I visited the place for the first time, I would not have thought that behind the steep hill, on top of the hill, there is a lake. It was an absolute surprise,” says Hagerlund.

From Helsinki, Hagerlund mentions Pihlajasaari, which “almost the entire island is a beach”. Big cruisers whiz by close by.

Cruisers sail past Helsinki’s Pihlajasaari. Picture: Tony Hagerlund

Hagerlund’s children’s favorite is also Plotti in the Pirkkola sports park in Helsinki, where you can go down a slide into clean tap water. An artificial swimming place is like an oasis surrounded by sand and grass, which is not controlled by blue-green algae.

From Vantaa, Hagerlund remembers Kaivoksela’s Vetokannas beach. In his opinion, the beach, which was renovated from a former sand pit, is in many ways one of the finest in the capital region.

Hagerlund in 2020 went through the websites of all Finnish municipalities and counted how many beaches there are in the country.

According to him, there are 1,481 swimming beaches in Finland, of which 301 are large so-called EU beaches or public beaches with more than a hundred daily visitors. The information is indicative, as the definition of a swimming beach is uncertain and beaches may have been discontinued or established since then.

Water was laid in the Pirkkola plot in Helsinki for the first time already in 1951. Picture: Tony Hagerlund

Hagerlund plans to donate all his beach photos to the city museums. In this case, the museums would get comprehensive sets of images from certain regions of Finland about what Uimarantna was like in the 2010s and 2020s.

All in all According to Hagerlund, Finnish swimming beaches are well maintained. The water quality and temperatures of many beaches are closely monitored.

“We have outrageously good public services here,” he says.

“In grand terms, Uimarantna can be thought of as a hymn to the functionality of Finnish society.”