A Cold Place

With winter heaving into view I'm reminded that I have only once been to a really cold place, and that was to Lapland in 2010, in January, where we stayed for a week. The weather was still and clear and, as you would expect of somewhere inside the Arctic Circle, cold, very cold - picture shows the house we stayed in which was, mercifully, wonderfully warm.

While we were there we did all the things that tourists are expected to do in such a place - ride in sleighs pulled by reindeer and eat reindeer meat, trek using snowshoes, and view the northern lights - they were conspicuously absent - but the best was ice fishing. This consisted of using an augur to drill a hole in the metre thick ice covering a small river, and then attracting the fish - Arctic char - with an artificial lure. As each fish was pulled out of the hole there was a sharp crackle, the sound of the poor beast being instantly frozen in a temperature of -34C.

We enjoyed the holiday immensely, particularly for the people we were with and for the stunning scenery, visible only in the short daylight hours, but I would never go back, for I found the cold crippling and the price of a dram to combat its effects depressing. 

However, I'm so glad we did the trip, for the experience and to appreciate the stubborn way humanity manages to adapt to almost impossible environment.