Holiday Club Saariselka

... can it? The boots are soft and ankle high, with a grooved plastic sole that fits onto a ridge on the narrow ski. The toe clips into a binding, and the heel is free to lift up from the ski. Unlike alpine skis, the binding isn't automatic, so you need to be flexible enough to reach your toes to unclip from the skis. The poles are far longer than for downhill, reaching up to my chest, and I soon work out this is because the ends ...

... discouraged, they don't appear to like people strolling (or skiing) across their frontier. Russia is very close to Saariselkä, the border lies about 30km as the crow flies to the west, across the Uhro Kekkonen National Park. Checking the BBC weather forecasts before we left, looking at Murmansk was better for predicting conditions in Saariselkä that looking at Helsinki. We're closer to the Arctic Ocean than to the Baltic.

... Perhaps its for the bar staff at the end of a shift, or for quiet periods during the day. It's in the wrong corner of the room to double as a snug. A serious oversight in the design. Paul is more taken with the array of festive 'Christmas' jumpers worn by the clientele, especially the red and green reindeer designs. A couple in the corner of the bar are splendidly complementary in white and red, with accents ...

... holiday destination. Just after 2am local time we arrived in our destination. Saariselkä lies about 250km north of the Arctic Circle, in the heart of Finnish Lapland. After dropping off people staying in a hotel, the rest of the group are taken to the cabins. The snow is past our ankles as we tramp along, reaching knee deep if we stray off the path, heaving, dragging and hauling out cases into our home for the next week.

... and moved on, to North. We drove past Santa Claus' Village. In the Arctic Circle turist village we did stop for awhile. Those kind of places are just so pointless that it's cool some way. If you have red American Gods by Neil Guiman (I had that as my travel book in America, you can imagine that I focused on the most interesting stuff there) you know what I mean. In the book the Center of America is a very spiritual place. It's the same ...

I have entered the land of the midnight sun! which, I've discovered, means I've been having a lot of trouble sleeping. Luckily, I have been able to relax in sauna. I just got back from the sauna at our hotel, which is right beside the Inari river - so we had a couple of dips in between sauna ...

Today we decided that we would drive a loop that would take us to Inari in the north of Finland (69° north) and then back slightly south before heading back to the base camp in Levi for the night. There are only a few countries that are in the same latitude region as this part of Finland: Northern Alaska, a fair bit of Canada, Greenland, Northern Norway, a tiny bit of Sweden and quite a bit of northern Russia. What this means is that it is a ...

Ok, from Ivalo it was a little bit harder, even though it is much larger than Inari. Still, I managed to get a ride from the 152nd car in the 65th minute, from a very quiet Finnish guy who was only going as far as Sariselkä, some 40 kilometers south of Ivalo.

During my last day in Inari, almost everyone I met was asking me if I had seen the bears, and upon some questioning, told me there were supposed to be some aggressive brown bears (because they had cubs) in the outskirts of the town. A good time to leave, I don't really want to see an aggressive bear (actually I do, as long as it does not see me). So, as I had missed my plane and was short on money, I decided to try my hand at ...

What an experience. A lovely quiet wedding; beautiful picture postcard scenery; deep snow so cold that it forms perfect stars. Apparently, this only happens after about -12 degree's? And of course, madmen in the middle of the night looking at the aurora borealis! http://www.saariselka.fi/eng/