Forever pining for a white Christmas we decided to book Christmas in Lapland for 2016. We started off just looking for a day trip which, within about 10 minutes, had turned in to a full blown holiday, to include Christmas day. From the offset we were hooked on the idea… we just had to keep it quiet from the children for almost a year. Why spend Christmas away from your loved ones you might ask? Well, we felt the children were at just the right age: 6 and 4 (and a half – DON”T forget the half!) and we wanted to capture the magic before it was too late.
We booked through a tour agent who organised everything: flights and hotel, thermal snowsuits and boots, a trip to see Santa, a session driving a snow mobile and a husky sleigh ride. Other trips were available as expensive extras but to be honest we were just as happy sledging. What else did we do… well… we walked to Sweden from where we were staying in Finland, crossing a time zone as we did, went for long walks to spot wildlife tracks and follow them (we saw an arctic fox and two baby reindeer) and we even had a picnic at -8 degrees just because there were some table and benches with beautiful soft reindeer skins on. When I say picnic I mean we had a drink and some Pringles (quickly). That’s not to say it was all snowflakes and hot chocolates with marshmallows (although there were a LOT of those) – bear in mind, if you are considering such a trip, this is pretty hard going, and we had tears (nearly frozen on cheeks) and sledging tantrums a plenty. But when I look back on it I remember the beautiful landscape, extreme sledging, the thrill of the snowmobile and possibly the best bit for me was the reindeer sleigh ride, through complete tranquility, up to Santa’s house, with not a single other thing in sight.
To be honest, at -20 I thought it was going to be a bit cold to be getting fingers out to take photos so we bought a voice activated Go-pro Hero5 and last minute I popped my camera in my bag because I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t. Maybe, considering the fact that there are just 4 hours of daylight – the sun doesn’t even go above the horizon at this time of year – I should have considered a flash or a tripod, but i didn’t honestly think there would be much need. Silly me. My photos of the northern lights are very much compromised by the fact that i had no tripod… and trying to get people flashed in with a head torch was a bit laughable – but whilst it’s happening the last thing you want to be doing is posing for a pic or sorting lighting equipment out. So I got what I got quickly, without fuss and then just enjoyed the experience.
The go-pro pics are alright at best (I probably need to change the settings but it was always too cold and too dark to care) and I’m still learning how to put a mini film together to music (my first attempt is at the bottom of the blog), but I’m really really glad we had it because I reckon I had about 2mins max before gloves had to go back on whilst using my camera.
So here are a few memories I’d like to share with you, from a trip of a lifetime….
