Where to Stay in Humppila, Kanta-Häme

Humppila is known as a small farming commune of the Kanta-Häme plain in southern Finland, the smallest municipality of the region, famous for its narrow-gauge heritage line. Steam still runs here. The Jokioisten Museorautatie carries old engines along the rails, the wooden Humppila-Museorautatie station keeps the look of the railway age, and the parish gathers around the Humppilan kirkko while the old Venäjän kartano manor recalls the great estates of the Häme countryside.

The Jokioisten Museorautatie is the landmark that draws people to Humppila, a narrow-gauge heritage railway whose steam engines work the Kanta-Häme countryside in southern Finland. At the village end stands the old Humppila-Museorautatie station, a wooden survivor of the railway age. The rest is parish and estate.

The Humppilan kirkko marks the heart of the commune, and the old Venäjän kartano recalls the manor estates that once held the rich farmland of the Häme plain.

Humppila grew on the farmland of the Häme plain. For centuries the parish lived by grain and cattle on the flat, fertile country of Kanta-Häme, its people gathered around the Humppilan kirkko, and the great manor estate of Venäjän kartano held a share of the land in the old way of the Finnish countryside. Then the rails arrived.

The commune was chartered in 1874 as the railway reached the Häme plain, and a station rose where the line crossed the village, drawing trade and travellers to this small corner of southern Finland. The railway became the town's signature. A narrow-gauge line ran out from the junction, and when the regular traffic faded, enthusiasts kept the old engines alive as the Jokioisten Museorautatie, with the wooden Humppila-Museorautatie station preserved as its terminus.

The grain country carried on around it. Through the changing years Humppila has stayed the smallest commune of Kanta-Häme, a quiet farming municipality whose steam trains and old manor keep the memory of the Häme plain alive in southern Finland.

Humppila lies on the flat grain country of the Häme plain, a small municipality of Kanta-Häme in southern Finland. The land runs level here. Open fields spread for miles around the village, with the Humppilan kirkko rising over the low farmhouses at the centre of the commune.

Forest rims the edges. Woodland and a few small streams ring the fields, the railway lines and main roads cross the plain to the village, and the wider commune reaches across this fertile corner of the Kanta-Häme countryside.

Humppila has a moderate inland climate for southern Finland, set on the open plain of Kanta-Häme. Winters bring snow and frost. The fields lie white from autumn into spring, the cold settles over the flat country around the Humppilan kirkko, and the short days draw in over the silent grain land.

Then the season turns warm and bright. The long daylight of high summer ripens the fields of the Häme plain, and the warm weeks bring the country roads and the steam trains of the commune back to life across this corner of southern Finland.

Humppila sits on the railway and main roads of the Kanta-Häme plain, and the train is one way in. The line across southern Finland calls at the village, the same junction that made the town in the railway age. Roads bring the rest.

The main highways thread over the Häme plain to the centre near the Humppilan kirkko, carrying buses and cars to the commune, while many visitors come for a ride on the steam trains of the Jokioisten Museorautatie from the old Humppila-Museorautatie station.