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When we woke up and stepped outside the apartment this morning, we found the weather was a complete contrast to yesterday. The sky was so much clearer and there was no mist at all. We had a rather different plan for today. When we rented the snowshoes yesterday, the lady in the rental shop had recommended that we take the local ski bus to a place called Kiilopää where we'd find a lot more snowshoeing trails. The bus was due to depart from a bus stop outside one of the main hotels in town at 09.45. The bus only runs from Saariselkä to Kiilopää once a day, returning in the evening. The timetable was a little frozen, but we could just about read it and work out that our return bus would be at 16.50. The bus arrived promptly at 09.45. We paid 5 euros each for a day ticket. Around 15 minutes later, the bus deposited us outside the national park entrance in Kiilopää. There were loads of different snowshoe trails here, so our first task was to figure out where we actually wanted to go. We chose a circular trail of 5.4km called "Poropolku". Mainly because "poro" (reindeer) is one of the few words we recognise in Finnish As you'll see in the photo above, the brown sign was pointing us in the direction we needed to go. But all we could see in that direction was a ski run, complete with yellow sign telling people not to walk on the ski run. In the end we had no other option but to walk down the middle of the ski run, being careful not to disturb the tracks on either side. And that turned out to be the correct thing to do! After five minutes we turned the corner and found the start of the actual snowshoeing trail. Before long we were snowshoeing our way past beautiful snowy trees. And we could see the sky beginning to turn pink with sunrise in the background. The snowshoe trail which we'd been on yesterday would probably have been possible to walk on without snowshoes. This trail definitely wouldn't have been; there was so much snow everywhere. The views were incredible but it was a bitterly cold day. I had to resist the temptation to remove my gloves to take too many photos or my fingers would have been at risk of freezing. It was hard not to take a photo every minute though, especially with this sunrise. We passed lots of little trees which were barely sticking out of the snow. Though there were still some bigger trees too. We hadn't been going for too long but I was already looking quite cold We crossed what felt like a bridge over a frozen stream. We snowshoed a little further past the bridge... ...and suddenly found ourselves at a fence. We had to pass through a gate, taking care to close it behind us. The sign informed us we were entering a reindeer husbandry area. We didn't see any reindeer today, though. I'm sure they could have heard us coming miles off with our snowshoes. At this point the route began to lead us gradually uphill. As we got higher we had a view of a larger hill in the distance, which I think is the Kiilopää fell that the area is named after. The colours in the sky were still fantastic The landscape didn't look real; I felt like we were walking across the icing of a cake. As the sun got higher in the sky we had a wonderful view of some trees silhouetted against it. We were climbing increasingly high... ...and the landscape was beginning to look quite barren. As approached the top of the hill, we also had a view of forests in the opposite direction. We suddenly realised we could see the moon above the frozen trees. While in the opposite direction we could still see the sun. We were really in the middle of nowhere by this point and we hadn't met a single other person on the same trail. The route was marked by small wooden posts with green tops. Lots of them were covered in snow so that the green wasn't visible but the posts still helped us know where to go. You'll see one of them in the photo below, to the right of the footprints. At this point we reached the top of the hill we'd been climbing. There was an info board - we think about local birds - but we couldn't really read it because it was almost completely frosted over. The views up here were incredible. In every direction! We felt like we were all on our own in the middle of an Arctic wilderness. Probably because we were all on our own in the middle of an Arctic wilderness After we'd finished taking photos at the summit, we turned right at the info board, following a clear track from people who had snowshoed before us. However, once we reached this frozen tree, we realised that there was no more trail to follow. No footprints and no wooden marker posts! We decided we'd have to retrace our steps and returned to the info board. And then we realised that if we'd turned left at the board rather than right, we would have found a new chain of wooden posts. We began to snowshoe towards the first post. The snow was really deep here! Even with the snowshoes on, we were sinking quite deep. We made it down in the end though and were soon firmly back on the right route. We were going downhill now, which was much easier. Soon we came across some proper signposts, confirming we were going in the right direction. Off we went, now heading back towards the national park entrance. We were walking towards the sun now, which was much higher in the sky than it had been earlier. The biggest surprise of the walk back was that we saw a bird. Can you spot it in the photo below?! It's clearer in this one We weren't sure what it was at the time, but having googled it we've worked out that it's a ptarmigan. Their feathers change colour from brown to white during the winter, allowing them to camouflage against the snow. This ptarmigan had a nest below the tree; we saw it disappear down into it. We still had another couple of kilometres to walk in the snow. We had some more amazing views of the sun through these trees. Eventually we made it back to the reindeer fence, complete with another sign asking us to close the gate behind us. The only problem was.... this didn't seem to be a gate! Tim worked out that we needed to remove the poles... ...and climb over. Then the poles needed to be replaced! Once we'd made it through the gate, the path became a lot easier. Before long we were back at the national park entrance where we'd started. There was a restaurant near the bus stop, so we went inside to warm up. And I may have eaten some cake. We actually wanted to have a meal, but the restaurant didn't start serving food until 3pm so we had a bit of a wait. That was fine though; we had time to kill until the bus returned for us at 16.50. And when we did finally get into the restaurant, we had a table with a beautiful view We went with burger and fries again, which is generally a safe choice in Lapland (so long as you make sure the burger is beef and not reindeer!). While we were sitting there our phones messaged us to alert us to cold weather! It certainly felt cold once we ultimately stepped outside the restaurant to retrieve our snowshoes. It was completely dark at the national park entrance now. We realised we could see the moon. Although they haven't come out in the photos, there were lots of stars too. We stood at the bus stop and waited for the bus. As we did we could see that the sky was two completely different colours; much lighter in the direction to the right where the sun had been setting, and completely dark to the left. The bus arrived promptly and took us back to Saariselkä, where we handed back our snowshoes and walked back to the cabin for our final night. Tomorrow is going to be a long day of travelling, with our first flight from Ivalo to Helsinki at 09.15. But it's 100% been worth it to come all this way; we've experienced some truly freezing temperatures, seen reindeer and the northern lights. I don't think we could have hoped for a better trip

There was no chance of seeing the northern lights last night; the sky was really cloudy. When we stepped outside after breakfast this morning, there hadn't been much change in the weather. Our plan for today was to hire snowshoes, so we set off towards a rental shop in the village. It cost EUR 20 per person to hire snowshoes (and poles) for the day. The hardest part of snowshoeing is strapping yourself into the equipment in the first place, but once we'd managed that we were ready to go There are a couple of snowshoe trails within the Urho Kekkonen national park, where we'd walked the Aurora trail earlier in the week. This map at the entrance shows how huge the national park is; we were just going to walk for a few kilometres within the recreational zone around Saariselkä, but the park stretches all the way to the Russian border. You definitely wouldn't want to get lost and end up there Our snowshoeing journey started by following the beginning of the Aurora walking trail. After a while we turned off onto a narrower track, designed especially for snowshoeing. From here the route became steeper. It's hard to make out how big the slope is in the picture below, but this was one I really didn't enjoy trying to get down this time last year. Luckily, today it seemed loads easier and I got down without any difficulties After that the path flattened out for a while, as we crossed over several cross-country skiing tracks. There are two separate snowshoeing loops which both have the same starting point. Up until now, we'd been walking on the shorter of the two, which is around 3km in length. From here we had the option of turning off onto a longer loop, which was about 6km. We'd attempted to do this longer loop last year, but given up on the idea because the track started off by heading down an almost vertical slope. We checked it out again today and yep, still no chance I was going down this slope! That meant we couldn't do a circular walk, but we could walk about half of the loop in reverse and then retrace our steps back to where we were now. This part of the trail was much easier to walk on. When we'd taken this route last year we'd had some amazing views of the sun behind these trees, but this year we couldn't see anything at all. It was so misty today that at times we could only see a few trees ahead. And all the photos have come out a weird shade of blue because there was so little daylight. Eventually we reached the point at which we were going to turn around. The snowshoe trails are the purple-dotted lines and we'd reached the red circle. It would have been possible to continue further, but we could barely see anything into the distance. It had also turned into a freezing cold day! I was getting icicles on my eyelashes again. And between snowshoeing and the freezing temperatures, it was difficult to take our gloves off to take photos. We turned around to follow the trail back to Saariselkä. The way back was nice and easy because it was mainly downhill Before too long we were nearly back in the village, ready to walk back to the cabin and warm up. I'm not sure whether my Fitbit managed to count every step while we were snowshoeing, but it's given me credit for 16 000 steps so it was another pretty active day!

It felt a bit milder when we stepped outside the cabin this morning and the thermometer on the wall confirmed that it was only(!) around minus 14. Our plan for today was to re-do the hike up Kaunispää hill from Tuesday, so we set off in that direction. The start of the walk was much easier now that snow had been bulldozed away from the entrance. The rest of the walk actually felt more difficult, though. It seemed to have snowed quite a bit overnight and so we were now walking in fresh snow. As with the previous day we passed lots of beautiful snow-covered trees. As we walked we began to see the sky turning pink in the distance. At first the colour was very faint, but it gradually started to become stronger. It was around half past ten by this point, so we were witnessing the beginnings of sunrise. The colours were stronger in real life than they appear on the camera. I was enjoying the views so much that at one point I accidentally stepped off the path while taking a photo The snow was so deep that it went all the way up my thigh! It was worth it for the photo though The view was so amazing that we couldn't resist capturing it in a video too We continued to gradually make our way up the hill, following the trail. This was the point at which we'd felt absolutely frozen the other day. Today felt a lot warmer because there was no wind. The colours of the sunrise were getting progressively brighter and brighter as time went on. Eventually we caught sight of the the top of the hill on the horizon. It felt like we were in the middle of nowhere... probably because we were in the middle of nowhere The final bit of the walk was particularly tiring as we walked up a steep slope of fresh snow. The view in one direction was completely dominated by the sun... ...while in the other direction all we could see was miles and miles of snowy wilderness. We reached the top and went inside the restaurant to warm up. We decided to treat ourselves to lunch while we were here By the time we'd finished eating the sun looked like it had risen as high as it was going to get. We started walking back down and unexpectedly found the return route a lot easier than anticipated. Obviously, walking downhill was a lot easier anyway. But it seemed particularly easy this time around because while we'd been inside the restaurant, a machine had been along to flatten down the path. That meant we were now able to walk downhill on nice compacted snow. While still admiring some beautiful views of the sun It was a fantastic walk and I definitely feel like we made the most out of today's daylight

After I'd finished the blog last night we went out for a meal in Saariselkä. It was very cold and snowing as we walked to the restaurant. We both had pizza, then shared a cloudberry pancake. I'd never had cloudberries before and not sure I'd bother having them again When we woke up this morning, it didn't feel quite as cold outside as it had been yesterday. The thermometer outside the cabin suggested that it was minus 18. It had snowed quite a bit overnight and so we walked straight out into fresh snow. After the strenuous hill-climbing we'd done yesterday, we'd decided to opt for an easier walk today. We remembered a fairly flat walk we'd done last year, towards another small village called Laanila. The route took us on a nice wide path through the forest. Occasional signposts confirmed we were on the right track. Although it had been quite dark and snowing when we set off, as we walked the sky began to become a bit lighter. Everywhere was still incredibly white, though. And we passed plenty of trees buried under the snow. We met a handful of other people out walking their dogs, but otherwise the path was pretty much deserted. Whenever we stopped walking, the silence was absolute. As we got closer towards Laanila, the sunrise (or sunset!) colours in the sky became stronger. On the outskirts of the village we came to a path which had been freshly prepared for walking, so we were the first to step onto the crisp snow. We established last year that there isn't actually much to see in Laanila itself. We followed signs for a different route back to Saariselkä, which looped us back round through the forest. This track was a bit narrower and seemed to have even fewer people on it. We passed under a tree that was completely bent double under the weight of snow. We also passed some tracks in the snow... Maybe some sort of hare? By the time we got back towards Saariselkä we'd walked about six miles in the snow. In the distance we could see the top of the fell we'd climbed yesterday. Today's walk was definitely less tiring than yesterday's but we've still seen some beautiful scenery

Between finishing the blog and going to bed last night we had some unexpected excitement; the aurora app I'd subscribed to sent me a notification to say that the northern lights should be visible outside. I was slightly sceptical, as I'd had a notification the previous evening too, but nothing had been visible when we'd stepped outdoors. Last night was different, however. I opened the door and.... wow...! This was 100% the best time we've seen the northern lights. We did see them on our final evening in Saariselkä last year, but they were much more visible with the phone camera than they were to our eyes. This time we could actually see the lights and see them moving, which was really cool I don't think we'll be so lucky tonight, because it's been a rather cloudy day, threatening to snow on and off. When we stepped out of the apartment after breakfast this morning we could see that it was going to be another cold one. As we started walking down the main road, I realised that literally everything I could see in the scene in front of me was white. We were planning to head off on a walk through these woods. The footpath was signposted, but in order to get onto it we had to climb through a rather small gap in the wall of snow in front of us. It was a bit of a challenge but we managed to climb up the snow and squeeze through the gap. There was then a rather steep slope down to negotiate on the other side. Once we'd managed that the route was nice and straightforward. We crossed over a snowmobile track... ...and began making our way through the trees. Some of the trees were so covered in snow it was hard to believe that they'll bounce back in the summer. The path was fairly flat initially. After a while it began to climb uphill. There was ultimately going to be quite a lot of uphill on the walk, because the path was taking us to the top of a fell called Kaunispää. It was quite gentle uphill though, so the walk never felt too tiring. And we passed some amazing trees The higher we got, the more snow the trees seemed to have on them. Once we started to get up above the trees, the wind chill factor made us feel absolutely freezing. Possibly the coldest we've ever been in Lapland! Tim's glasses started to freeze over... ...and I had ice forming on my eyelashes. We were quite high up above Saariselkä now though... ...and the summit of the fell was in sight. There's a viewing tower on the top which is used to look out for fires during the summer. There's also a restaurant... ...and a very cold-looking Saariselkä sign. Tim's beard was pretty icy now! We went into the restaurant to get a drink and warm up for a bit There's a ski lift up here, so we had a view of people getting ready for downhill skiing. Afterwards we ventured back into the cold for a stroll around the summit. There is actually a road up here, so some people had just driven up to eat at the restaurant. We felt virtuous, having walked up instead. But we now had the walk back down to Saariselkä ahead of us. Happily, the wind seemed to have eased off a bit while we were inside and the walk down felt a lot warmer. It's always a lot easier walking downhill anyway In what seemed like no time at all, we were more or less back down to the village. Once we got there we found that, in our absence, someone had been and bulldozed a route through to the footpath from the main road. So if we want to do the walk again this week, we won't have to squeeze through that small gap in the snow

My morning got off to a good start today with a breakfast treat of a Karelian pasty. Tim absolutely hates these local specialities, which consist of a rye crust with a filling of rice, but I think they're great When we stepped outside after breakfast it felt seriously cold. Look at this huge pile of snow outside our apartment! We set off along the main road, towards the starting point of the walk we'd chosen for today. It was a bit cloudier this morning and we couldn't make out the fell we'd been able to see in the distance yesterday. We were out a bit earlier than yesterday and we could see the sky was still tinged with the remnants of sunrise. We found this beautiful viewpoint near one of the main hotels. There were some people out skiing on the tracks below where we were standing. A little bit further on, we came to a rather unusual structure. This was new from last year and marks the beginning of the walks and ski trails in the Urho Kekkonen National Park. I was relieved to read that I was more likely to win the lottery than to encounter a bear or wolf in the national park! Our plan for today was to do the Aurorapolku walk, which is the easiest of the available winter walks. It starts with a nice downhill stretch... ...before you cross over this bridge and officially enter the national park. Parts of the trail after that are flat... ...but there is also a reasonable amount of uphill. So despite the fact that the walk is only a few kilometres, it can feel quite tiring in places. We passed some really beautiful scenery though. There were benches where it must be nice to sit in summer... ...and lots of wonderful snow-covered trees. We know from previous visits to Lapland that most of the trees which are bent by snow in winter will bounce back again in summer. This one looked like maybe it wasn't going to make it! The national park is one of the biggest in Finland and extends eastwards from Saariselkä, all the way to the Russian border. We met a few groups of other tourists, but mostly it was a really peaceful walk in the wilderness. As we began to loop back round in a circle towards Saariselkä, there were some beautiful colours in the sky. I was starting to feel rather cold by this point, though. We climbed back up through the village, past huge piles of snow, and popped into the supermarket for some more supplies. Once we got back to the cabin I could see why I'd felt cold; the thermometer outside our door looked like it was showing minus 24 It was a lovely walk but it was nice to get back inside and warm up a bit

We had so much fun in Saariselkä last year that, when we were looking at winter trips for 2024, we decided it was our first choice of Lapland destination. I managed to find relatively cheap flights to Ivalo via Helsinki and they were even at quite reasonable times, so we didn't have to get up too early this morning. Our alarms went off at 5am and we started the drive down to Heathrow. The roads were clear at that time of the morning but the airport was surprisingly busy; it felt more like a summer bank holiday than a Saturday in January, at least in Terminal 3. Not everyone was off to cold destinations; the people in front of us on the airport bus were going on a Carribean cruise. Our flight to Helsinki was due to take off at 10.20. It ended up being slightly delayed until 10.45 but we almost four hours between connections in Helsinki, so that didn't cause us any problems. The plane itself was huge, more what you'd expect for a transatlantic journey than a European flight. It was ten seats wide with two aisles and we were sitting in row 55. It wasn't a full flight so we ended up with three seats to ourselves and plenty of space. The seats had screens, so I was able to watch a couple of episodes of the Moomins during the flight, definitely getting me in the mood for a trip to Finland The screens also meant we had a view of what we were flying over via the plane cameras. Unfortunately, it was a very cloudy day and so we didn't get much of a view until we started getting close to Helsinki. We definitely got a good view of the plane coming in to land on the runway. Helsinki looked cold and covered in snow. The pilot confirmed that the temperature outside was -7! The temperature in the airport was nice and warm though. We had plenty of time to explore and visit the airport Moomins shop. I was surprised to find that there were still Christmas displays up in the airport too. We got through passport control without any incident and found somewhere to get some food, followed by coffee. Our flight to Ivalo departed fairly promptly at 19.15, with just a short delay while the place was de-iced. This was a much smaller plane, with only two seats on either side of the single aisle, and it was probably only about half full. The flight time to Ivalo was just over two hours, making it not much shorter than our initial flight time from London to Helsinki. Finland really is a very long country! When we landed in Ivalo it was cold and dark. Minus 16, to be precise! I was extremely relieved to see our suitcases coming round on the baggage carousel, having accidentally managed to drop my luggage receipt somewhere in Helsinki. We stepped out of the airport and straight onto the airport bus, which was even emptier than the flight; there were only two other people in addition to us. The benefit of coming back to somewhere we'd been before was that we knew which stop to tell the bus driver we wanted to get off and also how to recognise it when we got there. The bus journey from Ivalo to Saariselkä took around 20 minutes, so before too long we were getting off near the supermarket and petrol station in the centre of town. I'd messaged the owner of the apartment we were staying at for instructions a couple of days ago, so we knew we had to go to his office in the building by the supermarket, open the door with a code and pick up an envelope which would contain our keys. Everything worked like clockwork and all that remained was a short walk to the apartment itself. Once we got inside, everything looked very familiar. We have a kitchen area... ...with sofa and dining table too... ...as well as a separate bedroom. The only downside of the bedroom was that we had to start by making our own beds! We had a lie-in the next morning, to make up for the early start the day before. The great thing about being in Lapland this time of year is that it doesn't start getting light until around 10am anyway, so there's no need to get up super early Once we did get outside we could see how much snow was on top of the cabin we were staying in. It's harder to make out in the photos than in real life, but I think there could be a foot of snow on there in places! The area around the cabin is really pretty... ...and there's a lamppost with some incredible icicles on it. We set off down the main road to walk into the centre of Saariselkä. In the distance we could see one of the fells behind the town where people come to do downhill skiing. It was lovely to be walking in the snow again. And there was so much of it, everywhere. We passed the parking area for snow mobiles... ...and soon came to the village church. Everything looked very familiar as we made our way through Saariselkä... ...though we did spot Santa's office, which I'm not sure we noticed last year. Perhaps because we knew where we were going this year, walking round the village felt like quite a short walk. We decided to branch off down a different path and see where we ended up. There were some lovely views as we walked, although as it was around midday we couldn't decide whether we were looking at sunrise or sunset. We were following a cleared path alongside a main road and realised that the road signs were given in two languages. The first name on the signs is the Finnish one. Having looked it up, it seems like the second name is in Northern Sami. Our new route took us to what looked like the local fire station. From here we were able to follow a smaller path into the woods. We were walking on almost fresh snow, which was quite hard work at times. There were lots of beautiful trees though. We'd been walking for a while when we caught sight of something interesting behind a fence. We seemed to have found an enclosure of reindeer! There was one reindeer with really big antlers. Definitely wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of him! There were a couple of others without antlers, who were a bit friendlier. This one was exceptionally friendly. Probably hoping for some food It was a really cool place to just stumble across Once we'd finished admiring the reindeer, we set off back through the woods towards Saariselkä. We went to the supermarket to stock up on some supplies, then headed back to the cabin for a cosy afternoon indoors. I think it's going to be a fun week

There was no drama with smoke alarm batteries this morning, so we had a nice relaxed start to the day before heading out through the village of Saariselkä towards the national park. It looked like quite a dull and cloudy day as we started retracing our steps on yesterday's snowshoe trail. It was quite cold, though; the thermometer at our cabin showed that it was around minus 10 at the point we left. The route seemed quite easy now that we knew where we were going and we made good progress. The scenery was just as beautiful as it had been yesterday After we'd been walking for a while we noticed that the sky was beginning to clear and we could see the pink glow of the sun on the horizon. There are plenty of maps in the national park to make it clear where you need to go. The dark purple lines are winter walking trails, while the dotted purple lines are snowshoe trails. We'd done the small snowshoe loop yesterday, which was about 3km, and today we were planning to turn off onto the longer 6.8km route. A few minutes after turning off onto the new section of path though, I was dismayed to see that we had come to a slope which looked far too steep to get down safely. It's hard to see in the photos because everything is white, but this was really REALLY steep. It looked like there were steps up the path in summer, which were now obviously snowed over. As we were contemplating what to do next, two ladies came along and decided to slide down it on their bottoms. I didn't fancy that It was disappointing, but because the path was a loop we decided to try our luck walking in the opposite direction and at least complete part of the loop, before turning round and retracing our steps. We were soon on a lovely, much flatter sort of path from where we had some great views of the tree tops starting to be lit up by sunlight. They were so beautiful - this was definitely the sunniest day we've had in Lapland so far! We continued on along the route. There very few people on this trail and so we had the forest almost to ourselves. As we walked we began to get some great views of the sun. It was around midday at this point, so hard to tell whether this was the end of sunrise or the beginning of sunset. The snow was really deep if you strayed off the trail for a photo... ...and there was always the risk of falling down a hole and getting stuck! We weren't making very fast progress with this part of the walk because we kept having to stop to take more pictures Progress soon got even slower because the snow-covered trees looked so amazing with a blue sky behind them. The trail began to lead us uphill, but quite gently. The landscape became quite bumpy; there seemed to be lots of little trees and bushes underneath the snow. We went a bit further uphill... ...past more snowy trees... ...and got some more glimpses of the sun poking through them. It was all so beautiful that it didn't look real. The path took us higher and higher. In one place a tree was making an arch over the path. The path became a bit narrower in places but it was still easy to follow, with the route clearly marked by little signs. I could have stood and stared at the snow all day But we hadn't actually walked that far, so we needed to keep going! There was a bit more uphill to negotiate... ...lots more snow to admire... ...and then we finally got to the high point of the walk. This was the point at which the trail started looping round in the other direction, back towards Saariselkä and the very steep slope. We were tempted to keep following it. But, it was around 1pm by this point - so there was a limited amount of daylight left - and we didn't want to walk all the way back, then find we were unable to climb up the steep slope! We decided to turn around and retrace our steps along the part of the path which we knew we could manage. We didn't stop to take so many photos on the way back, so we made faster progress. The daylight was indeed starting to fade and the colours weren't quite as bright as they had been on the way out. And it was starting to feel rather cold; the hair spray which Tim had put on in the morning had definitely frozen. We made it back to Saariselkä before twilight fell, handed back our snowshoes to the rental shop and even managed to buy a bottle of wine from the alcohol shop before it closed It was a really incredible walk today with some fantastic views; a perfect end to what has been a great holiday in Lapland. I have a feeling we may be back!!

We had a bit of drama when we woke up this morning to a strange beeping noise in our apartment. We quickly realised it was coming from the kitchen smoke alarm, which was emitting a high-pitched noise every 30 seconds or so. It sounded like the battery needed changing, but unfortunately the alarm was mounted about 2.5m up the wall and there was nothing we could do to reach it. After breakfast, we walked round to the offices of the rental company to see whether we could get someone to come and change the battery for us. The offices were empty but Tim rang the number on the door and the owner promised to come and sort it out. Phew! It actually turned out to be useful because we owed €10 each for our bedding, which we needed to pay before the end of the week, so when the guy came round in the afternoon to sort the battery we were able to pay him for that as well We went back to the apartment to pick up our snowshoes and set out towards the entrance to the Urho Kekkonen national park, on the edge of Saariselkä. As ever, getting ourselves strapped into the snowshoes was a bit of a challenge, but it was slightly easier than yesterday and so soon we were ready to go. We started by retracing some of our steps from earlier in the week, along the Aurora trail. I don't think we'll be seeing any aurora today, though; it's been another very cloudy day. We haven't had much luck with clear skies on this trip! After a while we turned off the Aurora trail onto a smaller trail which was specifically for snowshoeing. There were two options; a short 3 km loop or a longer 6.8 km one. We decided to go with the shorter loop today. There was lots of snow everywhere, though the path was quite well compacted. We saw a handful of people who were managing to walk on it without snowshoes. The national park is beautiful but it's not very flat, so although we were only doing a short walk it did involve a lot of up and downhill. It looks like it might be quite rocky here underneath all the snow; we could see rocks poking out of it at times. The path took us downhill from Saariselkä to the bottom of a little valley with a frozen stream, then up the opposite side. So in the picture below we were looking across towards a bench on the opposite side of the valley, where we'd been a few minutes earlier. The uphill was tiring... ...but the downhill was actually worse. Even with snowshoes and two poles, I was not terribly impressed by the idea of climbing down this particularly steep slope! But I got there in the end, and that was the steepest part of the walk over and done with After that the walk was a bit more gentle. When we got to the end of the snowshoe trail, we decided to re-do the aurora walking trail as well (which was only another 2km or so). That was fun and as we got towards the end of it, we realised we had a view of the summit of Kaunispää, the hill which we'd snowshoed to the top of yesterday. It looked really high from here I think if we'd have seen it from this angle and realised what we were looking at the other day, we might not have set out to climb it! But it was actually a really lovely walk yesterday Despite the rather steep slopes, we enjoyed today's snowshoeing adventure too, so on the way home from the national park we stopped in at the equipment rental place and extended our rental for another day. Tomorrow we're going to come back and attempt to snowshoe the longer loop

When we stepped outside the cabin this morning, we found that there had been a bit more fresh snowfall overnight. The pile of snow outside our door is getting increasingly big. We're staying in such a beautiful location Our plan for today involved hiring snowshoes. We set off towards the main road in search of an equipment rental place. As we walked we could see the row of buildings on top of the hill that we hadn't quite made it to the top of the other day. If we managed to rent snowshoes, we were hoping to make it all the way up today. Renting snowshoes turned out to be very easy We found a rental place near to the supermarket and paid €15 each per day, which seemed very reasonable. Then we just had to figure out how to strap them onto our feet. That always seems to be the hardest part of snowshoeing, but we got there in the end and were soon ready to set out on the trail. The rental place had thrown in poles for free. I thought they would make walking easier but initially we found it hard work, as the path began to gradually climb up the hill. We stopped for frequent breaks to catch our breath, but that wasn't a hardship with views like this. Before too long the top of the hill was starting to look a little closer. And I felt like I started to get into a better rhythm with my poles. As we got higher the snow became deeper and the snowshoes became more useful. It was somewhere around here that we had to turn back the other day. As we climbed higher, I caught sight of some snowmobile riders on the horizon, which was pretty cool. There was a snowmobile track lower down that we'd crossed. We continued to pass some amazing snow-covered trees. This one was my absolute favourite. I definitely wanted to have my photo taken with it There were some brilliant views of the surrounding countryside as well. And the top of the hill really was starting to look very close indeed. For the last part of the trail it was difficult to see where the path was in places. Luckily it was marked with bright blue poles, which we could just about see even though they too were covered with snow in places. One final push and we made it to the top! There was some sort of observation tower at the summit, plus a pile of parked snowmobiles. There was also a rather frozen-looking aerial and a hotel. And of course some more great views The hill is called Kaunispää and there's a ski lift up the other side of it. Kaunispää is 437 metres high, so we had climbed up quite a way. Apparently on a clear day you can see all the way to the Russian border from here Once we'd finished admiring the views, it was time to follow the sign back down to the village. The walk down was a lot easier than the climb up It was still quite a long walk, though - today has been another 6 mile day. But it was great fun

Once we'd had dinner last night, we went out for a night-time walk around Saariselkä. We didn't see any northern lights but the sky was only partially clouded over, so we did have some beautiful views of the stars at times. And as we were making our way back to the apartment, we caught sight of the hill we'd been climbing up earlier in the day. We didn't quite make it up as far as those houses which you can see lit up, but we weren't far off It was another cold day when we woke up on Wednesday morning; the thermometer suggested it was around minus 10. The sky was a little bit clearer than it has been and when we set out on our walk it was clear enough to get a view towards some hills further in the distance. As I think I said the other day, it was hard to find much information about winter walking trails around Saariselkä online. At least, hard to find anything in English. But one of the sites where I had managed to find a little information suggested that there was an easy winter walking trail from Saariselkä towards a place called Laanila. We set off through Saariselkä to the place where I thought(/hoped) the trail was going to start, and luckily we managed to find it without too much difficulty It was a nice wide path through the forest - as wide as a road at times. There was a little bit of uphill but overall it was much easier to walk on than the path we'd been following yesterday. The track led us south of the main village of Saariselkä, through some residential areas. I got the impression that these might be the leafy suburbs of Saariselkä There were certainly plenty of trees around. Lots and lots of trees! We were enjoying the scenery so much that I lost track of how far we'd gone; it turned out to be quite a long walk. When we eventually arrived in Laanila, it wasn't much of a metropolis; the highlight was this bridge. Never mind, it was a fun walk and so it wasn't any hardship to retrace our steps. On the way back we spotted a few different things. There was this tree, full of little birds (I think the people who lived in the nearby house were feeding them!)... ...and these cars, which were so buried in snow I can only assume the owners weren't planning on driving them any time soon!! By the time we were back in Saariselkä we'd walked about 6 miles so it definitely felt like we'd made the most of today's daylight

Yesterday evening we set out for another night-time walk around Saariselkä. We'd spotted a restaurant earlier in the day whose menu looked promising (and not too expensive by Finnish standards). Admittedly, the restaurant looked a little tacky from the outside, with a giant illuminated burger sign... ...but inside the decor was a lot more tasteful. We ended up with a rather special table that resembled a wishing well, decorated with fairy lights. Tim ordered a kebab, while I opted for a Hawaiian pizza. Somewhat unexpectedly, when the pizza came it turned out to be drizzled in a yellow sauce. It tasted a bit like the sauce in a carbonara. The overall effect was a bit odd! Never mind, it was fun to go out and it was snowing a little bit as we walked back to our cabin. When Tim woke up this morning, he saw a digger coming to sweep up the snow which had fallen overnight and keep the road clear By the time it had got bright and we set out for a walk outside, the snow seemed to have stopped and the sky was starting to clear up a bit. Our plan for today was to explore a winter walking trail which we'd caught sight of yesterday when walking back from the supermarket. We weren't actually sure where it went, but it looked really pretty and worth exploring. Luckily it seemed like someone had been out with a machine recently to compact the fresh snow and make the surface of the path easier to walk on. There was plenty of snow weighing down the trees we walked past; it's hard to believe that they spring back when the snow melts, but they do! We passed some really beautiful trees and it was hard not to take photos of all of them. The path started off fairly flat, but after a while it began to lead gradually uphill. We reached a point where we had to cross over a cross country ski route and realised that we were actually quite high up. We could see what felt like miles into the distance, with a view of the endless forests outside Saariselkä. In the far distance we could even see that the sky was slightly pink, I guess with sunrise although it must have been 11 o'clock in the morning by this point. As we climbed higher, the trees became even more snow-covered! This one was my absolute favourite The landscape was so white that it's almost hard to make out the trees on some of our photos. As we got higher we could see more and more snow-covered hills in the distance... ...and we realised there were some houses up here, at the top of the hill we were accidentally climbing. We didn't make it quite as far as those though, because the path became increasingly difficult to walk on. You might just be able to make the path out on the photo below; it's towards the right of the picture, marked by a pole. Increasingly often we'd find that the snow wasn't compacted enough to bear our weight, so we'd fall down a hole in the path We decided we'd need snowshoes to go any further, so we'd better turn around. The good thing was that it was a lot easier walking downhill than uphill and we got back down to Saariselkä fairly quickly After a bit more shopping at the supermarket, we went back to the apartment to warm up for a while before hopefully heading out for another evening walk.

It's a long time since we've been to Lapland! The last trip we had abroad before the pandemic was to Abisko and Kiruna in Swedish Lapland. Little did we know as we travelled back from there, via Narvik in Norway, that it would be three years before we were in this part of the world again. Our past trips to Lapland have always been between Christmas and New Year, but this winter we decided to take advantage of my new and more flexible job to visit in January instead. The flights were a bit cheaper in January, without the demand that there is for visits to see Santa in December. We were keen to go back to Finnish Lapland this time around, but there weren't great flight options to the airport of Kittilä where we've flown previously. The cheapest flights were to the airport of Ivalo, which is even further north than we have been in Lapland before. A bit of research revealed that the nearest resort to Ivalo is the village of Saariselkä, and so that's where we booked to stay Our journey began around 6am yesterday morning with a drive to Heathrow. All went smoothly, though the airport was a bit more crowded than I'd expected it to be in January and we had to queue to get in somewhere for breakfast. Our flight boarded promptly and the plane was surprisingly large, with two aisles separating three rows of three seats. I had a window seat, though we were submerged in clouds for pretty much the whole journey so there wasn't much to see. It was a nice plane though and we had screens on the backs of the seats in front of us. They showed us not only a map of where we were flying over... ...but also shots of the view from cameras mounted on the plane. It was particularly exciting to watch the cameras as we came in to land. There's a two-hour time difference between the UK and Finland, so it was after 3pm local time by the time we landed in Helsinki. The temperature in Helsinki was hovering around freezing; it looked like there had been some snow here fairly recently and that it was just in the process of being melted by rain. Our onward connection to Ivalo wasn't until around 8pm, so we had plenty of time to kill in the airport. Luckily it's a nice big airport, so we were able to get some food, find a shop to buy some breakfast for the following morning (because we'd be arriving in Saariselkä after the shop had closed!) and then settle down in a café near our gate. As we explored the airport we even found a Moomin café (particularly exciting as Tim has been working on page-setting books from the Moomins series in Esperanto). Somewhere in the middle of this we had to pass from the international terminal we'd arrived into to a different part of the airport where domestic flights were departing from. This involved going through passport control, which was a slightly more stressful experience than I'd anticipated. The border guard spent some time staring at the Russian visa in my passport, then examining all my other passport stamps. He wanted to know how long I was going to be in Finland, where I was going, why I was here, what was the address of the accommodation I was staying at, was that the only place I was going to be staying... But eventually I was stamped in! Everything went smoothly with the flight to Ivalo, although we were a bit later than expected taking off because we were waiting for cargo to be loaded into the plane. It was pitch black dark by this time so there wasn't much of a view on this flight either. By around 10pm we had landed in Ivalo and the pilot announced as we waited to disembark that we'd be able to see the Northern Lights as we came down the stairs from the plane We've never been so eager to get off a plane! When we did we couldn't initially see anything at all... but eventually we caught sight of a wisp of something in the sky behind the plane. The light looked more grey than green to be honest - and the camera on my phone couldn't capture it at all - but we definitely saw something. It was a promising start to the holiday! I'm always a bit nervous waiting for our bags to come off the carousel after the year Tim's suitcase got lost between Helsinki and Kittilä, but we had no problems today. The airport in Ivalo is tiny and the bags were coming off the carousel almost as soon as we reached the baggage reclaim area. As we stepped out of the airport we saw the bus to Saariselkä straightaway and it wasn't even as expensive as I'd expected. The tickets cost EUR 13 each and we had a pleasant journey of about half an hour through the snow-covered countryside towards Saariselkä. I was a little bit nervous about finding our accommodation in Saariselkä too, but that also went smoothly. We managed to get off at the correct bus stop, which was the first battle. Annoying, it was one of those set-ups where there isn't a key safe and instead you have to go to the office of the rental company to pick up the key. Luckily that was in a building that wasn't too far away from where the bus had dropped us and when we got there, the key code I'd been given to open the main door of the office worked. Inside we found an envelope with our keys and a map to the apartment. It was less than a kilometre away and we managed to find it without too much difficulty. Phew When we got inside, we found that it was a really nice apartment. It was actually bigger than I'd understood, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms. It's not standard in this part of Europe to provide towels and bedding for free. I'd had to specifically request them and we owe an extra EUR 20 to the rental company which we need to go and pay at some point this week. I was relieved to see that they had remembered to provide them, although less thrilled about having to get two separate duvets into duvet covers at 11pm at night! Never mind, we got there in the end and went straight to bed to recover from what felt like a long day. When we woke up this morning it was time to get out the snow boots It had been too dark last night to see much of the area around where we were staying, so we were keen to explore. This cabin is the one that we're staying in. It's part of a little settlement, just off the main road. There's a thermometer just outside the cabin and it suggested that today was going to be a cold day. It certainly felt cold outside and I was glad of my neck gaiter. We spotted that one of the streetlights near the cabin has got the most enormous icicle on it too! We set off to explore some of the nearby scenery. As we walked on a path alongside the main road, we caught sight of what seemed to be a car park for snowmobiles. There were so many of them! We walked alongside a little frozen stream... ...and got a view of the big fell outside the village where there are downhill ski slopes. It was really beautiful... ...but quite cold! Eventually we looped round into the village itself. We found the local church... ...and walked along the main street. It looked like the Christmas lights were still up in places! We found the local pub (poro is reindeer in Finnish). It really is only a small village, but the views were absolutely fantastic In the distance we could see snow-covered hills and so many trees. This looked like it would have been a colourful fence if it wasn't covered in snow. And this was the traffic island on the main road at the edge of the village. We'd had the best of the daylight by this point so we located the local supermarket (which luckily was open on a Sunday!) and tracked down some supplies. It's actually quite a good supermarket - there's a much better selection of food that there was when we went to Abisko in Sweden - so we shouldn't be in danger of starving this week Then we headed back to our apartment to warm up for a while! It's great to be able to come back to Lapland and enjoy the snow again

Last night was our final night in Kiruna, so we decided to go out for an evening walk to see the Christmas lights in the town centre. The big Christmas tree looked pretty in the dark... ...and Tim looked quite regal in the ice throne We walked past the display of snow sculptures. It was actually a bit easier to make our some of the shapes in the dark. Once we'd done a circuit of the town centre, we headed back to our apartment for the night. We're flying back home from Narvik tomorrow, so the main aim of today was to travel back from Sweden to Norway. Our train wasn't until the afternoon though, so we were able to have a leisurely start to the morning. We'd just finished breakfast and were considering starting to pack, when I looked out the window of our apartment in Kiruna and was amazed to get a glimpse of some polar stratospheric clouds, just like the ones we'd seen in Abisko earlier in the week! We didn't have to check out of the apartment until 11, so we quickly pulled on our warm clothes and boots and ran outside to have a look. We walked along the main road from our apartment, trying to find a place from which we would have an unobstructed view. The clouds were the most amazing colours. Tim managed to capture them more accurately by making his camera darker. We walked down a rather slippery pavement, towards the park we'd discovered yesterday. From there we had the clearest views, without any buildings in the way... ...and the clouds looked beautiful above the snowy landscape. I could have stayed and stared at them all day Unfortunately, however, we had to return to the apartment to pack up our things and check out. Our train to Narvik wasn't departing until 14.51, so once we'd successfully checked out we had some time to kill in Kiruna. As we walked back into the town centre, the sun was rising and there were some beautiful pink colours in the sky There's a small indoor shopping centre in Kiruna, so that was our first stop. It had a cafe, where we got two rather strong Americanos From there we moved on to Kiruna's English pub (bizarrely, Kiruna has an English pub called The Bishop's Arms!!), where we were able to get lunch. I had a burger, while Tim had fish and chips. It was really dark in the pub (loads of places in Sweden seem to be really badly lit!) so we then moved back to the slightly brighter cafe for another coffee and some cake It was while we were having the coffee and cake that I got a rather disturbing text from Swedish Railways about our train When Google-translated, this informed us that due to a "nature incident" the train line to Narvik was closed. Oh dear We made our way towards the station, hoping for the best. It was still really snowy everywhere but the snow was flattened down and much easier to pull our cases on than it had been the day when we arrived It was much easier walking downhill from the town to the station, as opposed to uphill from the station to the town As we got close to the station, we passed a hill with an illuminated ski run which I hadn't even noticed on the day we arrived. When we got to the station the train to Narvik was sitting on the platform, so we boarded it and hoped for the best. It departed promptly, without any announcements about the line being closed. In the absence of announcements, I checked the Swedish trains website and found a message said that the "nature incident" had now been resolved and the line was opened again. Phew!! It was a big relief that we were going to make it to our destination; I don't know whether they would have put on a rail replacement bus if the train couldn't run, but if they didn't I think it would have cost more than our life savings to take a taxi We eventually made it to Narvik only 15 minutes or so behind schedule. It looked like it had been snowing quite heavily here and there was lots of fresh snow everywhere. Pulling our suitcases up Narvik's steep streets in the fresh snow was not the most fun we've ever had! Everywhere did look beautiful in the snow though And it was actually easier to walk on this snow than on the ice which had been here when we caught the train on Sunday. As we're just staying one night in Narvik this time and departing for the airport first thing tomorrow morning, I'd booked us into a small hotel rather than re-book the Airbnb apartment we stayed in at the start of the holiday. 895 Norwegian Krone (around £78) got us this tiny room which just about has enough space for both of us and our suitcases We do have free breakfast included in the morning though (which we intend to eat as much of as possible to get our money's worth!) and from our window we can see out across the whole of Narvik. Tomorrow will be a very long day of travelling, with two flights and about 9 hours to kill in Oslo airport, which I don't think will be worthy of a blog! But we've had a fantastic holiday, exploring a completely different part of Lapland and seeing some really amazing clouds, and I think it's definitely been worth the journey

There was lots of snow outside when we woke up in Kiruna this morning The house across the road from where we're staying also had some rather spectacular icicles! It had been pretty much dark when we arrived in Kiruna yesterday, so we were looking forward to seeing the town in the daylight. As we set off in the direction of the town centre, we passed some absolutely enormous piles of snow It didn't take us long to reach the town centre. We found some large snow-covered rocks... ...some pretty Christmas decorations... ...and a whole load more snow It's hard to make them out in the photos because everything is so white, but there were also some snow sculptures... ...and some ice sculptures. I really liked these presents made out of snow We didn't know a lot about Kiruna before we came here, choosing to stay here for a couple of nights mainly because it was the end of the railway line and somewhere I managed to find affordable accommodation, but it's actually a really pretty little town. With a population of around 17,000 people, it's the northernmost town in Sweden. The iron-ore mine here is apparently the largest one in the world, producing 90% of all the iron in Europe. Extraction has been going on here since around 1900 and has made Kiruna a prosperous place. However, the mine is now so extensive that it is starting to cause the town to subside The authorities have therefore decided to demolish the town centre and relocate it to a safer site, 2 miles to the east of its current location. It sounds rather dramatic, but it isn't all happening at once; buildings are being moved gradually, with the aim that the whole town centre will have been moved by 2035. The entire relocation process is being financed by the mine, with residents whose homes have to be sacrificed being compensated for 125% of the price. The most historic buildings in the town will be carefully dismantled and rebuilt in the new location. These include Kiruna's iconic wooden church, which we caught sight of while we were strolling around. The church was built in 1912 and is one of the largest wooden buildings in Sweden. Its unusual shape is because it was designed to represent the shape of a traditional Sami tent. Once we'd passed the church, we caught sight of a rather strange sight; a model rocket by the side of the road. Apparently there is a rocket research centre located outside the town. Across the road we found the entrance to the local park, marked by a large block of ice. We had a walk around the park, which was home to some unusual sculptures, like this rather cross-looking owl. There were also some really interesting photos on display of the early settlers in Kiruna. After we'd been around the park, we walked back up past the church, towards the town centre again. We found an icy throne... ...which I couldn't resist having a sit in As we rounded a corner we saw something which I really didn't expect to find in such a remote corner of the world On our way back towards the apartment, we also saw something else we didn't expect to see; a huge container by the side of the road, full of snow. A man with a digger was collecting snow... ...and depositing it in a big pile further down the road. Next thing we know, a lorry arrives with an empty container. The empty container is deposited... ...and the digger immediately starts filling it with snow. In the meantime, the lorry is picking up the full container of snow. It was so heavy that the front wheels of the lorry lifted off the ground as it was picking it up! The lorry then drove off with the snow, presumably to dispose of it somewhere outside the town. It was a really interesting insight into everyday life here; it's hard to imagine having so much snow that you need industrial machinery to remove it! It's been quite cloudy again today, but once we got back to the apartment the sky was turning a beautiful shade of blue for sunset

As there didn't promise to be a lot happening in Abisko for New Year's Eve, we were booked to visit the nearby Aurora Sky Station for the evening. This is a mountain-top viewing platform, located on a mountain near to Abisko Turiststation, and it's supposed to be a great place for seeing the northern lights. The only way up is via a chairlift and, unfortunately, Abisko had been experiencing strong winds all day, which meant that it wasn't safe for the chairlift to run. A bit disappointing, but I guess that just means we'll have to come back another year and try again On nights when the chairlift is cancelled, there is an alternative programme at Abisko Turiststation instead, so we were picked up by a shuttle service to participate in that instead. We arrived at the Turiststation at around 20.50. The activities weren't due to start until 21.00 and the number of layers we were wearing meant that it was really hot inside, so we decided to wait outside for a while. The Christmas decorations were pretty At 9pm we were ticked off the list and then invited into what I can only describe as a large wooden teepee, with a big fire burning in the middle. We sat here briefly, before being offered the opportunity to go on a northern lights walking tour. We didn't ultimately end up seeing any northern lights, but it was still a fun experience Our guide led us down a series of snowy paths for about half an hour, towards the shore of lake Torneträsk. We definitely wouldn't have walked so far in the dark on our own. The sky wasn't as cloudy as it had been earlier in the day and so we were able to see an amazing quantity of stars, although unfortunately it wasn't possible to capture the night sky with our phone cameras. Eventually we walked back up to the teepee, where there was free gluehwein and hot chocolate on offer There was also dried reindeer meat, but I gave that a miss It was definitely a different way to spend New Year's Eve When we woke up in Abisko this morning, we were in the middle of a blizzard. We were travelling to Kiruna today, but our train wasn't until 12.26, so we had time for a final walk around the village in the snow And there was a lot of snow; it didn't take long until we were both covered in it It was really beautiful to be walking through the snow on New Year's Day though We needed to check out of our hostel around 11, so after a while we had to turn around and go retrieve our suitcases. The station is only a few hundred metres from where we were staying, but it turns out that pulling your suitcase through fresh snow is hard work! We had a while to wait at the station for our train. The platform looked deserted in the snow. The trains in Sweden appear to run on time even during blizzards though There was a nice heated waiting room at the station but some of us were a bit warm after pulling our suitcases through the snow The train arrived promptly and soon we were on a journey through a snowy wilderness. It was snowing so much that a lot of the view was obscured, but every so often I could make out the shapes of mountains in the distance. It's hard to make out in the pictures, but for a while the train travelled alongside lake Torneträsk. As we moved away from the lake and got closer towards Kiruna, the weather seemed to improve a bit and the views became a bit clearer Soon we arrived in Kiruna itself. It looked like there were lots of wagons of iron ore here, waiting to go to Narvik, and in the background behind them we could just make out what I'm guessing is the mine. The station is a couple of kilometres outside the main centre of Kiruna, so there was more snow to pull our cases through. Everywhere looked really pretty though We weren't able to check into our apartment until 3pm, so we had a bit of time to explore. Everything was closed up today for New Year's Day, but we found a main street with a supermarket without too many difficulties Plus we got to see some really beautiful colours in the sunset. Then it was time to check in. This is definitely the most spacious accommodation of our trip In addition to a living room, we have a bedroom... ...and a huge kitchen/dining area. We were actually really lucky with the hostel in Abisko and were the only people staying in it for the past two nights, but it's definitely nice to have a bit more space to spread out this evening

We went out for a walk to the lake in the dark last night, but it was so cloudy that we couldn't even see any stars, never mind the northern lights We were outside for about an hour or so, during which time we walked down to the lakeside and then along part of the path towards Abisko Turiststation. It was snowing all the time, and the snowflakes looked really pretty in the darkness. The unusual street lights which we'd seen earlier in the day were actually really good at night, projecting light downwards so that we could see the path, and not causing lots of light pollution. We might not have seen the northern lights last night, but when we stepped outside our apartment this morning we saw something even rarer in the sky. These, we later learned, were polar stratospheric clouds, and we'd never seen anything quite like them before. Our phone cameras weren't able to capture all the colours, but they were really beautiful; all the colours of the rainbow We were really lucky to have seen them, because the rest of the sky was quite overcast today. As we walked towards Abisko Turiststation, the top of the mountain was obscured by the clouds again. Although, when we turned around once more, we did get another glimpse of the special clouds You can perhaps get a slightly better impression of the rainbow colours in this photo We didn't have a firm plan for the day, but we were hoping to explore a bit more of the national park. We headed off through the wooden walkway again... ...and this time followed a different trail, which we hoped would give us a view of the canyon from the opposite direction. When we'd been at the canyon viewpoint yesterday, we'd seen a bridge across the canyon lower down but hadn't been able to figure out how to get to it. Today we found it and were able to stand in the middle, looking down the length of the canyon. The views were really beautiful There weren't many other people around today either, so we had them pretty much to ourselves We did meet two other people as we were on our way back up from the bridge to the viewpoint we visited yesterday though. The woman started speaking to us in Swedish, before explaining to us in English that there were two moose up ahead! They were quite a distance away and camouflaged by trees, so you're going to have to play spot the moose with the photos It was really cool to see them and they were absolutely huge animals! Once the moose had moved on, we made a quick stop at the viewpoint where we'd taken photos yesterday, to have another look at the ice. Then we followed a track which took us under the main road, then alongside the river which flows through into the canyon. The views of the canyon were really impressive on this side too... ...and we could see the power of the water beneath the ice. The wind was really strong by this point and it was snowing quite heavily. We didn't want to walk too far, so we decided to follow one of the marked trails through the woods for a while, and then turn back. There does seem to be quite a good system of marked walking trails here, although I haven't been able to figure out where to get a proper map that shows where they all go. They are numbered and colour-coded though, with strips of colour wrapped around the trees so that you know you're going in the right direction. We couldn't exactly see polar clouds at this point... ...but there were still some pretty colours in the sky. The trees were really pretty too... ...although it's still surprising me how different the trees are here to in Finnish Lapland. Once we'd walked for half an hour or so, we turned around and headed back the way we'd come. On the way back, there was just time for a final look at the canyon It was already starting to look like twilight as we walked back towards our apartment. When we got as far as the station, we were passed by another one of the iron ore trains to Narvik. From there it wasn't far to walk to Abisko's shop, where we wanted to stock up on supplies. We're travelling to Kiruna tomorrow, but with it being New Year's Day we're not sure whether any shops will be open when we get there. One of the things we needed to stock up on was chocolate; luckily we managed to find some Ritter Sport among all these sweets Then it was back to the apartment for some much-needed food and a rest before we head out again this evening for another attempt to see the northern lights. Not sure we're going to have any success, as I think it's still going to be overcast, but we can't complain when we have seen such beautiful clouds today

Having arrived in Abisko in the dark last night, we were excited to see it in the daylight this morning As expected, it's quite a small place, with a handful of buildings along a main street. The hostel we're staying in is quite small (only four rooms), but we passed a couple of bigger guesthouses as we walked along the street. One of the attractions of Abisko is that it is situated on Lake Torneträsk and we soon found a path which led us down to the lake shore. As you can probably tell from the photo, it was snowing lightly and so we acquired a sprinkling of snow on us as we walked along As we approached some boat houses and covered up boats, we knew we were getting close to the lake. Lake Torneträsk is the sixth biggest lake in Sweden, with a surface area of 130 square miles. We saw a group of people with sticks getting ready to walk on the ice. It didn't look 100% frozen to us though or, at least, the ice wasn't completely covered in snow like the frozen lake we have walked on in the past in Finland, so we didn't fancy standing on it. We got close to the edge though and it was really pretty We enjoyed the views of the lake for a while and then walked back up towards the village. In the distance we could see the tall building of the railway station, where we had arrived yesterday evening. We were looking for a path which would take us to the settlement of Abisko Turiststation, which we passed through on the train yesterday shortly before we arrived here. There were no signs at first, but we followed a small road past these houses in what seemed like the correct general direction. The road led us up towards the railway line, where we were just on time to see a passenger train on its way to Narvik. Shortly after here we saw a sign pointing towards the Abisko National Park, which is what we were looking for. It was still snowing quite heavily at this point. We followed a snowy path, which was initially lit by normal street lamps. As we progressed further along it, it was lit by these smaller, more tasteful lamps instead. It's only about 2km from where we're staying to the national park. One thing which struck us as we followed the path was how different the trees are to Finnish Lapland. Finland is full of conifers, whereas the trees here all seemed to be deciduous. We also realised after a while that we had a view of the frozen lake in the distance Before too long we passed a sign which indicated that we were getting close to our destination. There's supposed to be a big mountain here with a chairlift, but the weather was so cloudy that we could barely make out the base of it. It had more or less stopped snowing now, but I had accumulated rather a lot of snow in my hair Abisko is the start of the Kungsleden hiking trail, which runs from here for 440 km to a place called Hemavan. This wooden construction marks the beginning of the trail. We certainly weren't going to walk that far, but we did want to do a little walk to see a frozen canyon which I'd read about online. We followed a signposted trail along the side of the canyon, at first not able to get much of a view. Soon we were able to look down and see water below us... ...and then the view opened up and we were able to see down the length of the whole canyon. The best views were yet to come though As we rounded a corner, we were able to see down towards a pool of water which definitely wasn't going to freeze any time soon, because we could see fast water flowing into it from behind the rocks. We could also see a huge block of frozen ice which a group of people were attempting to climb Definitely not a winter activity that we'll be attempting! We walked further along and came to another viewing platform. From here we had an amazing view of the icy canyon... ...and of the people trying to climb the ice wall! It was a really beautiful place We followed the path a little further, but the walk didn't seem to be circular so in the end we had to turn around and come back. The weather had begun to clear up a bit now though and by the time we'd retraced our steps, the cloud had moved enough for us to see the mountain which had been completely obscured when we'd arrived. As we turned to walk back to the village of Abisko, we realised we could also now see further out across the lake... ...and it most definitely was not completely frozen We're rather glad we didn't decide to try walking on it now We made it back to Abisko while it was still daylight. We decided to explore the local shop, which is situated with a petrol station beside the main highway which passes through the village. I had been a bit worried about this in advance, because when I'd googled the name of the shop (Godisfabriken) it seemed to be primarily a sweet shop. We'd brought a supply of our own pasta and cup-a-soups with us in our suitcases just in case it wasn't possible to buy any savoury food here But, luckily, that turned out not to be a problem; although half of the shop was indeed given over to an enormous display of pick and mix, the other half was fitted out more like a normal supermarket and so we were able to buy some pizza, as well as ingredients for a bolognese Once we got back to the hostel with our provisions, we realised that the view had now cleared enough for us to be able to see the blue water of the lake from outside our door. It's been a really fun day, and although I think it will probably be too cloudy tonight for us to see any northern lights, we're going to try going out for a walk down to (but not onto!) the lake in the dark later

One of the main things which had convinced me to book flights to Narvik earlier in the year was the fact that it is the terminus station for a railway line known as the Ofotbanen. The train line was built between Sweden and the Norwegian coast in the late 19th century, to enable iron ore being mined in the Swedish town of Kiruna to be transported to the ice-free port of Narvik. Iron ore is still transported on the line today, but there are also two passenger trains per day which run between Norway and Sweden. This means that flying to Narvik is actually quite an easy way to get to Swedish Lapland. The journey itself is supposed to be really scenic, most notably between Narvik and a station called Riksgränsen, which is located at the Swedish border. We'd therefore decided to catch the first train of the day, to ensure that we saw the scenery in daylight When I opened the curtains in Narvik this morning, I saw to my surprise that it was raining The rain had stopped by the time we'd packed up and checked out of the apartment, but it had interesting consequences for the condition of the roads. It was really hard to tell which bits of the road were wet and slushy and which bits were more icy and slippery. Luckily our Yaktrax seem able to cope with all surfaces and we made it to the station without falling over! I'd already bought the tickets in advance online and we had reserved seats, so all we needed to do was wait on the platform for the train to arrive. There were actually some nice views of the fjord from the platform. The train was due to depart at 10.48 and it arrived promptly. There were some groups of Chinese tourists, but overall it wasn't too busy and we were soon on our way towards Sweden As the train pulled out of Narvik, we got a view of a bridge across the fjord which I think we crossed on the airport bus in the dark the night when we arrived. By chance we were sitting on the best side of the train for views The photos are all a bit blurry as they were taken through the glass of the train window, but we travelled along the fjord for miles. As we got further on, it became increasingly narrow... ...until eventually we got close to the end of it. By this stage, the scenery was becoming increasingly mountainous. Finally we passed the end of the fjord. The train took us right across the top of it... ...and then we were properly inland. On the sides of some of the mountains I could see frozen streams. We were getting close to the Swedish border now. We had decided to get off the train at the border station of Riksgränsen, where we were hoping to get lunch and kill some time before catching the second train of the day on to Abisko. We could have stayed on this current train all the way to Abisko, but we would have ended up getting there three hours before we were able to check into our accommodation and, as research suggests that there aren't very many amenities in Abisko (a village with a population of 85 people), that didn't feel like a good plan. Having researched various destinations along the route, Riksgränsen had sounded the most promising place in terms of restaurants and cafes. The guidebook had described it as Sweden's best ski resort and recommended it as a day trip from Narvik. First impressions when we got off the train in Riksgränsen were that it looked a bit small. It was scenic though, with lots of snowy hills. And we were now in Sweden, which was exciting We started walking down to explore the village. Google maps suggested that there would be a restaurant up this road but, when we got there, we found it was all closed up. Trying a different direction, we passed this bus shelter completely buried in the snow There didn't seem to be very many people in Riksgränsen and so far we hadn't seen a single restaurant which was open. We did find a shop, and Tim asked the staff for directions to a cafe. They told us that everywhere in Riksgränsen was closed and that the nearest open establishment was in a neighbouring village They described the village as being 15 minutes away, but the only way to get there was to walk down the main road which they said was a) slippery and b) dangerous because lorries drive along it quite fast. When I looked it up on Google maps, Google suggested it would be more like a 40 minute walk than 15 minutes anyway, so we quickly ruled that out as an option. We could see ski lifts on the hills above the village, but those weren't operational either. The girls in the shop explained that the skiing season hasn't started here yet because, despite the fact that there's lots of snow, there isn't enough daylight. The fact that a ski resort would be closed in December had never occurred to us when we booked this trip We didn't have any options but to walk back up to the train station and wait for our train to Abisko. The station didn't exactly have a lot of facilities. We were able to buy bread, cake and crisps at the shop and have a picnic lunch in the snow; not quite what we'd been hoping for for lunch, but better than nothing We also had some wine in Tim's suitcase (which we'd brought with us because Abisko is too small to have its own alcohol shop) and that livened the picnic up We were lucky that it wasn't actually very cold today; I think the temperature must have been above zero, because we could hear snow melting from the station roof. It was warm enough for Tim to take his coat off anyway I suppose it's fair enough that they don't ski here in December, because there really wasn't a lot of daylight. By 2pm, it was already looking like twilight. By the time Tim went down to the shop again to get some more supplies, it was properly dark. Everywhere looked very pretty in the darkness though. By 3pm it may as well have been the middle of the night! Every so often while we were waiting, freight trains came past bearing the logo of LKAB, the Swedish mining company. The trains were enormous, with so many carriages that it took several minutes for each one to pass. Needless to say, we were incredibly pleased when it was finally time for our train to arrive. This train had sleeper carriages which were continuing on all the way to Stockholm. Perhaps that's an idea for a future holiday! Our journey to Abisko only took around 45 minutes. There are actually two stations in Abisko - Abisko Turiststation, which is the site of a youth hostel, and Abisko Östra, which is the station for the main village. We were getting off at Abisko Östra. Abisko is a very popular winter destination and so, when I was booking accommodation here, options were extremely limited. There were no available apartments or hotels, so I booked us into a small hostel where we would have a bedroom to ourselves, plus use of a shared kitchen and bathrooms. The prices here are reminiscent of Icelandic prices, and so our stay here is costing £98 per night. As you can see from the photo, the room we're getting for that price is a bit on the small size It's warm and comfy though and all the shared facilities seem clean. Best of all, the owners messaged me days in advance with the check-in instructions, including the code we needed to get our keys out of the key safe, so Abisko is already winning over Narvik in that respect! The area around Abisko is supposed to be beautiful, so we are looking forward to exploring it in the daylight tomorrow

We woke up feeling rested this morning and a bit more enthusiastic about exploring Narvik than when we'd arrived last night It was still dark at around 9am when Tim set out to find a shop to buy breakfast. It seems like things are slow to get started in Narvik on Saturday mornings, so it took a while before he found one that was open. By the time he'd returned and we'd had breakfast and were ready to set out again, things had got a bit brighter. Our apartment is in this red wooden house. From our windows we can see this big mountain, with its illuminated ski slope. Hopefully this picture also helps to illustrate how steep the side streets in Narvik are! We were prepared for the slippery pavements today though and had our Yaktrax on, which made it a lot easier to walk. Our first stop was the local shopping centre, because we wanted to track down Narvik's branch of Vinmonopolet, the state-owned alcohol store. We knew from our previous visit to Norway in 2013 that these shops have restricted opening hours and are often closed at times you might expect to be able to buy alcohol, like on weekends or bank holidays. The good news was that when we found the shop, we were able to establish that it was open until 15.00 on Saturdays, so we knew we'd be able to return later and buy some wine It was worth going into the shopping centre anyway to see the Christmas decorations We headed outside again, walking along the town's main street. The mountain we can see from our apartment looms across the whole town. There aren't a lot of sights in the town centre, but there are a few strange landmarks like this huge pyramid. We realised that we could see down towards the bus station, from where we'd started our uphill climb last night. In the distance, we could also see Narvik's main church. The town feels quite large, but it only has a population of 14,000 people so it's actually pretty small by UK standards. Our aim was to walk downhill, towards the harbour area, in the hope of getting some views of the fjord. It wasn't long before we got our first glimpse of the sea! As we walked towards the water, we passed this unusual building. Once we got to the far side of it, we realised that it was a church The further we walked, the more impressive the views became. We began to get better views out across the water. In places the side of the road was quite rocky and we passed some incredible icicles. I don't think I've ever seen icicles this big before Eventually we made it down to the harbour. Despite the fact that it is located very far north (the furthest north we've ever been) Narvik is warmed by the Gulf Stream and so the harbour here is always ice-free. The town grew up here in the 19th century, when a Swedish mining company realised that they could use the harbour to export their iron ore. A significant amount of iron ore is still shipped from here today, and so although some of the views of the fjord were stunning, overall Narvik does have a bit of an industrial feel to it. The ice-free nature of the fjord had unfortunate consequences for Narvik during the Second World War, because the harbour was of strategic importance to both sides. It's hard to imagine when it all looks so peaceful today, but two naval battles were fought in the fjord in 1940. There is a war museum in the Narvik but we didn't go. The views were starting to get obscured by clouds at this point and light snow was falling, so we decided we'd walked far enough around the harbour and turned around to climb back up towards the town centre. The Christmas lights in the main square were pretty. Walking along the main street in the opposite direction from before, we came across this signpost showing the distance between Narvik and various destinations. It turns out we're slightly closer to St Petersburg than we are to Oslo The daylight is quite limited here and before it got dark, we wanted to locate the train station from where we will be catching a train to Abisko in Sweden tomorrow. It turns out that it's actually not that far from our apartment. Walking towards it, we had some more beautiful views of the mountain. We were hungry by this stage, so we walked back towards the shopping centre, where we'd spotted a pizza restaurant earlier. I went for a tropical pizza, which unusually featured pineapple and spicy pepperoni, while Tim had a chicken burger. The food was filling, and not too expensive; we stuck with the free tap water again, so just had the main courses, and the bill came to just under £30. We weren't in the restaurant for long, but by the time we stepped outside, darkness had fallen. Walking back up towards our apartment, we could see the ski run illuminated again. Having explored Narvik today, the apartment is actually in a good location, not far from the train station or the main street. It was a bit of an unpleasant surprise last night to have to do so much walking uphill with our cases (and then not to be able to get into the apartment), but that aside it hasn't been a bad place to stay We're spending tomorrow travelling to Sweden, where we'll be staying in less glamorous accommodation, which will hopefully be compensated for by some amazing scenery!

We had some difficulties with planning our post-Christmas Lapland trip this year. We'd decided that, after a few years in a row of going to Äkäslompolo in northern Finland, we wanted to try somewhere different and we were considering travelling to Ivalo, a village even further north. We spent ages waiting for Ivalo flights to be released by Norwegian, before eventually realising that they'd discontinued their Ivalo route. By the time we'd figured that out, flights to Finland after Christmas were far too expensive, and so it was too late to change our minds and go to Äkäslompolo again instead. While searching for cheap flights to anywhere snowy on the dates we wanted, I stumbled across a good deal to a place in Norway called Narvik. I can't pretend that I'd ever heard of Narvik before, but it seemed sufficiently far north that it ought to have snow, and once we did some research we realised that it was situated at the far end of a train line leading into Sweden. That sounded promising, so we decided to give it a go and I booked the flights while they were still cheap Getting to Narvik involved flying with Norwegian via Oslo, and so it was that our alarms went off at 4am this morning for another early morning drive down to Gatwick. We were flying from the south terminal this time, as opposed to the north terminal for Bolzano, so that was a bit of variety at least; it really didn't feel like very long since we were last in Gatwick We arrived in plenty of time for our 09.20 flight and survived the chaos of self-check in with only a minor blip when Tim's suitcase turned out to be over the weight limit. This may or may not have had something to do with an attempt to import our own alcohol into Scandinavia Luckily, Norwegian is a much friendlier airline than Ryanair and while we had to go to a separate desk to get the bag checked in, we didn't have to pay anything extra. All that remained to do was to keep our fingers crossed that our baggage labels were properly stuck on this time and neither of our suitcases would get lost en route! Our flight departed promptly and we had a pleasant journey. The first part of the flight was very cloudy, and although the sky cleared up about halfway through the journey, the majority of the flight was over the sea so there wasn't actually a lot to see. It was only about half an hour before the end of the flight that I got my first view of the Norwegian coast. As the plane moved further inland, snowy mountain tops suddenly became visible. We flew over the mountains, looking down on frozen lakes and rivers below. As we got closer to Oslo, the countryside became a little flatter. There seemed to be snow everywhere, even this far south. Oslo itself was covered in cloud and there was an announcement saying that the pilot wanted all electronic devices on board switched off to help him land in it We landed safely though and were soon inside Oslo airport, where we had 5.5 hours to kill before our second flight to Narvik at 17.55. We decided to kill some time by having lunch and walked around exploring the various eating options at the airport. We settled for Jamie's Italian, which I thought had gone out of business in the UK but which still seems to be going strong in Oslo. Tim had a tagliatelle bolognese... ...while I opted for a spicy meatball pizza. Both were good, although the Norwegian prices are going to take a bit of getting used to; each main course cost around £18. A glass of wine would have cost £12, so we decided to save money and drink the free tapwater Then there were just a few more hours to wait before our internal flight to Narvik. I passed them with reading, drinking strong coffee and starting to write this blog. We also had to move from the international terminal into the terminal for domestic flights, which provided a bit of variety. Overall Oslo airport is really nice. The seats were comfy and there were plenty of water fountains. We had come prepared with our own water bottles so that we didn't have to pay for bottled water. Our flight to Narvik started boarding promptly at around 17.30. I had expected this to be a smaller plane because I didn't think Narvik would be a very popular destination, but it was actually the same size as our flight from Gatwick and seemed to be completely full. I had high hopes of us departing Oslo on time, because the flight was scheduled to land at 19.35 and the airport bus was due to depart for the town of Narvik at 19.50. If the flight was delayed and we missed that bus, it wasn't the end of the world because the was another bus scheduled for that evening... but not until after 22.00, so we would have quite a long wait. Unfortunately, despite the promising start we didn't take off on time. The plane got close to the runway, but then had to join a queue of planes which were waiting to be de-iced. We sat for about half an hour before it was our turn to be sprayed with the de-icer and we could get on our way. The flight took around 90 minutes, so it was after 8pm before we landed in Narvik. There were no views on this flight as it was so dark, but as we came into land in Narvik we could see that it looked pretty snowy The airport which I've been referring to as "Narvik" is actually called Harstad/Narvik airport, a name which it seems to have acquired by virtue of being located equally far from both Harstad and Narvik, in a place called Evenes. It is a very small airport, so we walked straight off the plane and into a room which seemed to serve both as an arrivals hall and as baggage reclaim. We had to wait a while before the baggage carousel to start up, so I had time to get increasingly nervous about whether our bags were going to have made the connection... happily they both did, and so all that remained was to see whether the airport bus had waited because the flight was delayed. Amazingly, when we stepped outside the airport we found that it had indeed waited I had already purchased the tickets online for 297 NOK, which is about £26 each for a journey of around an hour. The bus waited for a while longer to make sure that everyone had had time to collect their luggage and that there were no more potential passengers, before setting off on its route. The journey took us around the edge of the Ofotfjord, so I had tantalising glimpses of the coast out of the window, whenever there was sufficient light to see anything The snow seemed to go right down to the water, but the water itself was frozen. The bus stopped at various hotels in Narvik, terminating at the bus station. I'd decided that the bus station would be the best place to get off, although I'd done so without realising that the bus station was at the bottom of a rather large hill and the rest of the town was at the top of that hill. We spent 10 minutes or so pulling our cases up very steep and icy pavements, before arriving at the same level as the penultimate bus stop outside one of the town's hotels. Oops - it would have been much better if we had got off there! We are staying in Narvik for two nights and I had booked an apartment via Airbnb. This is the first time I've ever used Airbnb, normally preferring booking.com, and I had only been tempted to use it on this occasion because the apartment I'd found was a mere £60/night which by Norwegian standards seemed like an absolute bargain. I had been a bit nervous about it all day though, because I hadn't had any information from the host about how we were supposed to check in, save for some instructions in Norwegian on the reservation which, when Google translated, gave the address, explained that we needed to enter via a back door and that the apartment was on the second floor, with a key in a key box. That was all well and good but I assumed that there was a code required for the key box, so I'd messaged the person on Airbnb yesterday morning, explaining what time we were arriving and asking for instructions. I hadn't received any reply, so I was hoping that it would turn out to be obvious when we got there. Getting there turned out to be more difficult than I had anticipated. Nothing I had read about Narvik in advance had mentioned the fact that the town is built on a steep slope. The apartment was only 1km away from the bus station and a couple of streets away from the town's main street, so I'd figured it was in a pretty central location. It may be, but we spent most of the kilometre walking uphill on pavements which were covered in frozen snow. Our snow boots have a good grip and some of the pavements were gritted, but even so it was a difficult walk. We arrived at the address on the reservation around 22.15, cold and out of breath. Following the limited instructions we did have, Tim went in through the back door of the building, and found what might be the apartment; a door on what to us was the first floor (but could possibly be the second floor in Norwegian) with a key safe inside it. The key safe was, of course, locked with a code and we didn't have the code. Oh dear The Airbnb app had a "call the host" option, so Tim attempted to give them a ring. Nobody picked up initially, but we did get a call back shortly afterwards as a result of which we got the key code and were able to get inside. Yay No apology or explanation though as to why we hadn't been given this information in the first place! Once I'd recovered from the stress of check-in, I could see that the apartment actually is quite nice. We've got a little kitchen with a dining table... ...a comfortable living area... ...and a slightly cramped bedroom where there's only just enough space to walk around the bed We'd been travelling for 17 hours at this point, leaving home at 04.30 and getting into the apartment around 22.30 Norwegian time, so we decided to call it a night

As we were walking back from the supermarket after doing the blog last night, we hit a new temperature record for this holiday - minus 28! It felt significantly warmer when we stepped out of the apartment this morning, and the thermometer in the village confirmed that it was a comparatively mild minus 14 We just caught a glimpse of the beautiful sunrise as we left the apartment and started walking towards the lake. Our plan for today was to give skiing a go on our own. We carried the (heavy!) skis as far as the sports shop, before getting changed into our ski boots and temporarily leaving our own boots behind in the shop. The advantage of doing it this way was that otherwise we'd have had to have walked all the way to the lake in the ski boots, skied, then carried the skis back to the apartment, changed into our actual boots, and carried the skis back to the shop. This way we could go skiing, then hand the skis back in and collect our own shoes once we'd finished Walking in the ski boots is actually really difficult because they don't have very good grips on them. Crossing the main road and walking through the supermarket carpark were particularly tricky, because the snow is quite compacted and slippy there, but we made it all in one piece and were soon on the lake, ready to begin. Alfie got off to a strong start I needed a bit of time to warm up Alfie was out-performing me and Tim so much that he was soon just a little black dot on the horizon! He may have managed a few more laps than we did We spent a bit of time catching our breath before setting off again. Once we'd skied to the far side of the lake, Alfie and Tim decided to practise their skills at skiing uphill... ...and downhill. Some attempts at going uphill were more successful than others Going downhill wasn't without challenges either! Once we were all thoroughly exhausted, we skied back across the lake, handed back our equipment and indulged in a large amount of pizza By the time we'd finished eating, it had started snowing outside. As we walked back towards the apartment, the snow got increasingly heavy, to the point where we couldn't even see the lake (it's normally visible in the distance here). By the time we got back to the apartment, it felt like a proper blizzard. There was lots of fresh powdery snow on the ground. We were able to walk through the untouched snow to the door of our apartment It was a fun end to what has been a great holiday. Tomorrow will be a long day of travelling, with our first at 10.50 from Kittila and then our second at 17.05 from Helsinki. Lapland is always a destination which involves a lot of travelling, but we definitely think it's worth the effort

It felt very cold when we stepped out of the house this morning, and sure enough once we got to the village thermometer we found it was showing a temperature of minus 23. We were walking towards the frozen lake to try and find a snowshoeing path that we'd seen signposted while we were skiing in the woods the other day. On the way we passed a sign advertising ice swimming in the lake, but we decided to give that a miss and stick with our original plan of snowshoeing instead The lake looked beautiful again in the snow. We put our snowshoes on and then we were ready to set off. Tim's beard had already started to freeze I was looking rather cold too! As we set off across the lake, we could see a slightly pink glow in the sky, although the colours weren't as strong as they had been the other day. After a while we reached the far side of the lake and found the start of the trail, marked by blue poles. The path led us through the trees. The snow was pretty deep here... ...especially if you strayed off the path It was beautiful here, but extremely cold! Tim and Alfie decided that they were too cold and that they wanted to head back to the shopping centre to look for some souvenirs. I decided to carry on on my own and explore some more of the path. Once I was on my own, I may have got slightly carried away taking photos of trees again The further I went, the deeper the snow seemed to be. It definitely wasn't getting any warmer; if you look carefully in this photo you might be able to see the ice on my eyelashes, as well as my white hair The path became narrower... ...before leading up a snowy slope into the forest. Now I really was right between the trees. I was glad of the blue poles; without them it might have been difficult to tell where the path was going. The path continued along a little ridge for a while, but then started to lead quite steeply downhill. I decided I'd better turn back, because I might not get down the slope - or if I did, I might not get back up again I started making my way back towards the lake. It was coming up to 2pm now and so there was an orange glow in the sky... ...and a bit of pink over the big fell in the distance. I tried a sunset selfie As I emerged back out onto the lake, I was excited to see a herd of reindeer crossing the lake. They were quite a long way away, so it was difficult to get a good photo. Once they'd moved off into the trees, I continued on my way and was over halfway across the lake when I saw a single solitary reindeer in the distance. He started getting closer. Was he going to walk towards me? Wow, he literally walked right past me! I've never been as close to a reindeer as this By this stage I was in danger of turning into an icicle, so I headed back towards the supermarket. Tim and Alfie had had a successful shopping trip and discovered that, while we'd been out, the temperature had dropped even lower, hitting minus 25; a record low for this holiday!

2019 started with a lie-in for me and Alfie because we were going husky-sledding, courtesy of my parents, who treated Alfie to this for Christmas. Clare didn't fancy being a driver, so instead set off snowshoeing in the woods, leaving us behind. There was fresh snow on the ground, which always gives a lovely crunch when you walk on it: For once, we didn't walk in the direction of the supermarket but instead took the opposite turn walking uphill to our bus stop. The scenery is just as pretty: We got there with plenty of time to spare, nearly half an hour before the bus was due. I remember from last time that it's not the easiest bus stop to find but we were there within minutes and awaiting 12:30. We ended up waiting longer; the bus arrived at 12:43, forty minutes after we did, but was still earlier than last year. We boarded and there was only a family of four there. I thought our luck was in! Not quite so. We drove to the main office whereupon the guide explained that we were picking up some more people and that we were free to use the toilet, get a drink and even pick up some equipment. He made a point of suggesting to me that I might quite like to borrow a jumpsuit to protect me from the cold. Clearly he's not aware that this is the man who forswears gloves and a jacket at minus 17 if he's required to do any form of exertion! Alfie asked me how long this was going to take. Theoretically, it shouldn't have taken any time at all; the information on the ticket stated that we would be picked up at 12:30 and that the event would start at 13:00. However, we didn't leave until 13:20, arriving at 13:50. It was a lovely journey, though. We were quickly welcomed off the coach and given our safety instructions. There really wasn't a lot for passengers to learn, other than sit down and keep your extremities within the sled: Drivers had a bit more to learn, including hand signals for stop, go and slow down, and how to brake: We were even further delayed because the safety instructions were being translated into Spanish. I grew a bit restless and had a peek at some typical Sami accommodation: The dogs were all tied up and ready to go: There are 160 dogs at the farm. Although they're there to work, they each have names and personalities. Some of them bark in excitement because they want to run, others are more restful and have a quick nap between tours, whilst still others pull at their leads to try to get the tour started earlier! We happened to have the first sled in line and were soon off with our team of six: Sometimes there are eight dogs in a team for when there are more people on the sled. The dogs might have liked to have another couple added to their number once we hit the uphill stretch! The dogs are partnered alongside the dog they live with. Usually the whole team are neighbours. If the team works well, the dogs are kept together but changes are made if required, such as if the dogs fight. It's rare but it can happen. Our own team was soon broken up because of a problem. It didn't involve fighting though: Ours was a team of five boys and a single, solitary female. Apparently a "heat team" had been out a couple of sessions before and it gave two or three of our males ideas about the female in our group, so she had to be removed and replaced! Soon we were off and running again. The dogs nearest the sleigh are wheel dogs. They tend to be males, since this position requires the most strength, the dogs taking weight on their shoulders. The dogs in the middle are the fastest. The first dogs are the leaders, the brains of the team, planning the route. Usually these are females. Don't worry about the cold and how much you would hate to be out in it. The dogs live outside and love Arctic conditions, tolerating up to minus 45 degrees. Optimum weather for running is minus 20. When they get hot, they just grab a mouthful of snow on the move to cool off: One of the few things you have to do as a driver is apply the brake when bends come up so that the dogs, in taking a corner at pace, don't end up swinging the sleigh off the track. The guide on the snowmobile gives you the hand signal to slow down, which you then relay to the people behind you: Before long, darkness had descended and the dogs led us home: Everything looked beautiful with the magnificent sky behind it: Our own dogs were too keen on grabbing a drink to want to play with us, so we went and said hello to some of the dogs who were already in place for the next tour. There were some really friendly dogs there! We then got a chance to warm up by a fire: Our guide served us some hot berry juice and gave us some information about the farm and the dogs there. She explained that the dogs don't eat in the morning because their guts might twist when they run. In the evening they get a kilo of raw meat and dog pellets. They work quite hard in the winter, running 20 to 30 kilometres a day. The season starts in early December until mid-April. In summer the dogs get to play outside because they don't do any running in the heat. Training for the new season starts in August. After that we got to meet the 13 puppies, born and raised there according to a strict breeding programme, where males are matched to females! Sometimes, however, there are surprise puppies. Otto, who is 14 and the oldest dog on site, used to escape by scaling a wall and then would open the door of the cells of the bitches in heat. You know what happened next. The puppies are kept as pups until they're one. They start training for a year and join a team at two, racing until they're ten. Old retired dogs typically live with the puppies, doing grandparenting. Sometimes they get a new home because there are people in the area who collect retired sled dogs. Once they get a taste of it, the puppies love running. The relative calm can quickly be broken by puppies chanting in unison once they catch sight of another team getting ready to head out! One final look at the farm with that wonderful combination of snow and sky, and then we were back on board our coach, returning home after a really fun day out!

I hadn't fancied joining Tim and Alfie at the huskies today, not being a huge fan of dogs. That meant I had to find something else to do instead. I decided to opt for snowshoeing, and re-do the trail which we had all done together on Sunday. It had been snowing all through the night and so as I left the apartment behind and made my way towards the woods, the ground was covered in fresh snow. When I got to the point where the path began, I could see that a machine had been along to flatten the snow down a bit, making it easier to walk on, but it still seemed a lot deeper than on Sunday. Time to put snowshoes on! I set off on the path through the trees It was very cloudy today so the colours in the sky weren't as impressive as they have been on other days, but it was still really lovely. The trees seemed even more laden down with snow than they had earlier in the week. We've been told before that they bounce back once the snow melts, but it looked like it was going to be harder for some than for others. Some looked like they were never going to bounce back at all! I had a go at taking a selfie with snowy trees, but it wasn't terribly successful I could actually have spent all day taking photos of trees Some of them were really huge... ...while others were barely poking up through the snow. By this point I felt like I must be getting close to the cafe. Sure enough, I soon got confirmation that I was getting to the icy part of the walk. I figured if I'd got across the ice once, I could do it again I managed it without any problems and was soon back on the snow. I passed the cafe without going in; it was starting to snow again, so I thought it seemed best to press on. The most exciting thing about the next bit of the path was that I was the first person to walk on the fresh snow It was such a beautiful walk. The path led past a stream, which wasn't completely frozen... ...and then under some more bent-over trees. I had another go at a selfie here Then I got to the downhill slope part of the walk. This actually seemed easier today, with more snow to dig the snowshoes into. After that, it was back up through the valley of trees... ...and back to the road. You can't really tell from the photos, but at this point there was a minor blizzard, with lots of snow falling and a rather strong wind. By the time I eventually got back to the apartment, I was rather cold It was a great walk though and wonderful to walk in the fresh snow