Day 5: Saariselkä

As predicted, the sky wasn't clear enough last night to see any northern lights. When we stepped outside this morning, we found that the temperature was a bit warmer than yesterday at around minus 11 degrees...

...but the sky was still very cloudy and overcast.

We started walking through the village, past a shopping centre...

...where I realised there were enormous icicles hanging off the roof!

Then we followed a trail which led us out into the forest.

We were following signs to a place called Laanila, which is an even smaller village just outside Saariselkä.

Or, at least, we were trying to follow signs! Luckily we've been here before, because the signs were quite iced over

There isn't very much in Laanila once you get there, but it's a nicely maintained winter walking trail through the woods.

The trees were completely covered in snow today; it felt like we were walking in Narnia

Some trees were completely bent over...

...while this one had already fallen over and collected a lot of snow on top of it.

It's really interesting comparing the photos to when we did the same walk last year. The trees were a lot greener then...

...and the signs were a lot more readable.

It's definitely been a colder winter this year!

For me, of course, it was also interesting to do a comparison to what everywhere had looked like in summer. I hadn't followed this exact trail in July, but I'd walked through Laanila on the day when I was transferring between Saariselkä and Kiilopaa. The trail I'd walked along was this one in the photo below, running alongside the fence. In winter, this is a cross-country ski run.

In summer it was a nice hiking path!

This is the winter walking path we'd followed today...

...and this is what the same route looked like in July.

I love seeing the contrast! By this point we were pretty much at Laanila. We had a walk around, confirmed there was still nothing to see there, and then started heading back through the woods.