Where to Stay in Kauhava, South Ostrobothnia

Kauhava is known for the Lentosotakoulu, the air force training school that flew over this flat farming town of South Ostrobothnia for generations. Planes once ruled its skies. The town in western Finland gathers around the Kauhavan kirkko, and the Suomen Jääkärimuseo keeps the record of the Finnish Jäger movement that the district carried.

Beyond the airfield, Kauhava is a broad rural municipality that drew in the old parishes of Alahärmä, Ylihärmä and Kortesjärvi, each with its own church, a country of farms and Ostrobothnia plains.

The Lentosotakoulu is the great mark of Kauhava, the air force school whose airfield shaped the town for decades, its heritage hangars still standing on the South Ostrobothnia plain. Four old churches gather the parishes. The Kauhavan kirkko, the Alahärmän kirkko, the Ylihärmän kirkko and the Kortesjärven kirkko mark the villages drawn into the modern town, while the Suomen Jääkärimuseo tells the Jäger story and the Iisakin Jussin tupa keeps an open-air farmstead, and the old stone giant's church of the Korkeamäen jätinkirkko lies out in the western Finnish forest.

Kauhava grew as a farming parish on the open plains of South Ostrobothnia. Long a country of large farms set among the fields and bogs of western Finland, the district gathered its life around the Kauhavan kirkko, while the neighbouring parishes of Alahärmä, Ylihärmä and Kortesjärvi raised their own churches across the flat land. Iron was once worked here.

A bloomery at the Rantalan harkkohytti recalls an early ironworks, and the old stone giant's church of the Korkeamäen jätinkirkko marks far older settlement on this Ostrobothnia ground. The twentieth century brought the military to Kauhava. Its airfield, home to the Lentosotakoulu air force school, carried the town's name across Finland for generations, while the district's part in the Finnish Jäger movement is kept in the Suomen Jääkärimuseo.

Parishes joined into one. Alahärmä, Ylihärmä and Kortesjärvi were drawn into the modern municipality, their churches and farmsteads gathered under the name of Kauhava, which settled into its role as a broad rural town of South Ostrobothnia in western Finland.

Kauhava spreads across the flat plains of South Ostrobothnia, in western Finland, one of the broadest rural municipalities of the region. The land lies wide and level. Fields, bogs and pine forest fill the country, the centre by the Kauhavan kirkko set among them and the old airfield of the Lentosotakoulu laid out on the open ground.

Villages dot the plain. The former parishes of Alahärmä, Ylihärmä and Kortesjärvi stand across the farmland, the rivers running low through the level Ostrobothnia landscape that has shaped Kauhava since its farming days.

Kauhava has a cold inland climate set by the open plains of South Ostrobothnia in western Finland. Winters are long and snowed, the flat fields and bogs around the Kauhavan kirkko lying under deep snow from autumn until the late thaw, with little to break the cold across the level land. Frost grips the plain.

Summers are short and bright, the long northern daylight warming the Ostrobothnia farmland through a brief growing season before the snow returns to this corner of western Finland.

Kauhava sits on the rail line and main road across the plains of South Ostrobothnia, well linked for a rural town of western Finland. Trains stop at the station in the centre near the Kauhavan kirkko, and the roads run out across the flat country to the villages of Alahärmä, Ylihärmä and Kortesjärvi. The old airfield no longer flies civilians.

Travellers from farther afield reach the larger towns of South Ostrobothnia by rail or air before driving the last stretch to Kauhava across the open Ostrobothnia plain.