Day 3: Walking on the frozen lake

When we woke up this morning, we found that it had been snowing overnight, so there was lots of fresh powdery snow outside our apartment. It was still snowing a little bit by the time we finished breakfast and went outside, in fact.

Our first task for today was to walk to the sports shop from which we were renting our snowshoes and skis, so we set off into the centre of the village.

It was fun walking through the snow to the shop. It was slightly less fun when, having collected everything, we had to carry all the rather heavy equipment back through the snow to the apartment!

Once we'd recovered from our exertions we set off once again, this time for a more leisurely stroll.

There were people skiing past us as we made our way back to the centre of the village.

Before long we caught a glimpse of the frozen lake in the distance.

We'd been for a stroll down to the lake last night when we'd been taking advantage of the supermarket Wi-Fi to post our blog. It was different seeing it in the daylight though

Part of the lake isn't completely frozen, where the local river flows into it.

That part of the lake is completely fenced off with warning signs though, so there's no chance of you making a mistake in the dark!

The partially frozen river is very pretty too, as Alfie and Tim found when they crossed the road for a closer look.

We'd come to the far end of the village now (it's only small!) so we turned around and headed back towards the supermarket.

The carpark outside the supermarket is home to this enormous reindeer...

...and from the far side of the car park, you can catch a glimpse of the local reindeer farm too.

Some of the reindeer had huge antlers.

A path leads down from behind the supermarket to the frozen lake.

As you descend onto the lake, you can see the boathouses where people keep their boats in summer.

And then all you can see is the enormous frozen lake itself, and some of the snowy fells in the background.

There are a couple of paths to follow to walk across the lake.

There are also a couple of ski runs, which are marked by red poles so that you don't stray onto them by mistake.

As we made our way into the middle of the lake, we started to notice the unusual pink colours in the sky.

The further we walked, the pinker it began to look...

...until suddenly it was very pink indeed!

It was after 1pm by this point, so perhaps it was the beginning of sunset!

It was beautiful anyway, and the most unusual colours we've ever seen in the sky in Lapland

Tim was taking a picture of Alfie with the view...

...when I turned around and realised there were some reindeer walking across the lake!

We were quite a long way away, so it was difficult to get a good photo, but they were definitely there. How exciting!

As we finally got to the far edge of the lake, the sky looked increasingly dramatic.

We followed a smaller path up into the trees on the other side of the lake for a while.

This took us up past some cabins and to a small road...

...from where we had a view back down towards the lake.

We couldn't really risk exploring any further in case it started to get dark, so we turned around to come back.

Once we got back down to the lake, we could see that it was indeed starting to look like twilight.

We did a bit of shopping at the supermarket and then headed back to the apartment just as darkness fell and the street lights started to come on again. We were quite tired by this point, having walked about six miles in the snow, but it was definitely worth it for the amazing views