This year's trip to Lapland did not get off to a good start when I got a text from Finnair on Friday evening informing us that our flight to Helsinki had been cancelled Luckily, this was followed up by a text shortly afterwards informing me that we were being rebooked onto the next available flight, which was only departing around half an hour later. Phew! I had planned the journey with around 3 hours for us to change in Helsinki for our connecting flight to Ivalo, so even with a bit of a delay we should still have more than enough time.
We left home around 05.30 on Saturday morning and drove down to Heathrow. There was no explanation as to why our initial flight had been cancelled, but when we boarded the plane around 10.00 it didn't seem to be full and we ended up getting an entire row to ourselves. I'm guessing there just wasn't enough demand to operate two flights to Helsinki so close together and they decided to merge the two flights into one.
The weather was rather cloudy, so I wasn't able to see much out of the window until the coast of Finland began to come into view. There were so many tiny islands in the sea!
As the plane flew more overland we could see that southern Finland looked snowy.
Very snowy indeed!
We ended up landing with a slight delay some time around 15.30. There was still plenty of time to make the connection. As soon as we were given permission I took my phone out of flight mode so that I could see whether there was any info about what gate we needed to go to... and found a string of missed texts from Finnair.
Our connecting flight had been cancelled too Wow, that was unexpected. When we got into the terminal building the transfers screen confirmed the cancellation.
Finnair had booked us onto the next available flight again, which was at 20.45. We made our way to the transfer desk to get new boarding passes printed, which was fairly straightforward. The lady at the desk reassured us that our bags would be put onto the new flight and also informed us that our new boarding passes had been loaded with €17 of credit which we would be able to use at most coffee shops in the airport.
That was some good news at least, because we now had almost five hours to kill in Helsinki airport. We had some lunch, went through passport control and then found a coffee shop where we could make the most of our free credit.
It did feel like quite a long wait but the 20.45 flight to Ivalo did ultimately depart on time, which was a relief. Again, this flight didn't seem to be completely full, so I'm guessing that's why our initial flight was cancelled. Frustrating, but at least we were on our way!
The internal flight took slightly under two hours, so it was some time around 22.30 when we finally landed in Ivalo. We were slightly surprised when the pilot announced that the weather was slightly warmer here than it had been in Helsinki The thermometer on the side of the airport showed that the temperature was exactly zero, which is significantly warmer than it was this time last year. When I'd been checking the weather forecast from home it hadn't looked like it had been very cold in Lapland over the past week, but this was warmer than I expected.
We didn't have long to wait for our luggage (which happily had been put on the correct flight!) and soon we were sitting on the airport bus. Looking out of the window as we drove towards Saariselkä I could definitely see that there didn't seem to be as much snow as usual. In fact, rather than being covered in snow, the trees looked remarkably green from what I could see in the headlights of the bus.
We got out at the edge of the village and walked towards the apartment we're renting for the week. The owner had warned me in a message on booking.com to be careful as pathways might be slippery and he was right. Luckily there was plenty of grit down, because it was clear that it would be very icy if the melting snow started to freeze.
We checked into the apartment and found it looked reassuringly the same as last year...
...complete with the pile of sheets and pillow cases for us to make up our own beds.
It had been a long day so we didn't make a very early start to Sunday. When we did get up I was glad to see that it was colder than yesterday and actively snowing outside.
Although there might be less snow than last year, there is still quite a lot.
As we walked along the ring road which circles the village the pavement was no long icy and now had a light covering of snow at least.
We made a circuit of Saariselkä, walking past the place where the snowmobiles are parked...
...and continuing round onto the main street.
The snow was continuing to fall and we could see the trees starting to look a bit less green.
We reached the main road which runs between Ivalo and Rovaniemi...
...and crossed it, walking towards the village fire station.
From there we followed a path into the woods.
Although the path looks quite snowy it was difficult in places because there were sheets of ice underneath what was still quite a thin layer of new snow.
We persevered and made it to a spot that I definitely remembered from last year: the reindeer enclosure!
There were three reindeer here today, all without antlers.
The white one was the bravest and keen to come and say hello.
Eventually the other two followed.
They were very cute Though we felt a bit guilty as they were probably hoping we had food!
Unfortunately I didn't manage to get a photo, but as we walked away from the reindeer and continued through the woods I saw what must have been an arctic hare! It was much bigger than I expected and completely white, well camouflaged against the snow.
I had had the impression that when we'd walked this way last year, we'd somehow managed to do a loop back round into the village. We followed the path for quite a while but didn't find anything that looked like a turn off back towards Saariselkä.
We found some snowmobile tracks, but following those didn't seem like a great plan.
In the end we turned around and retraced our steps back the way we'd come.
As we did so we could see the beginnings of pink in the sky: time for sunset already!
Once back in Saariselkä it was time for a trip to the supermarket to stock up on supplies for the week. The shopping centre was still looking quite Christmassy!
The weather forecast on our phones suggests there might be a bit more snow this evening. Fingers crossed for more snow and less ice tomorrow!
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