It's been a while since we last went skiing. This time we went for something a bit different and went to Ylläs in northen Finland, Lappland if you prefer, inside the Arctic Circle. It's not a very high resort, but it's latitude ensures it's cold enough for plenty of snow. In fact we had been seeing temperatures of -25C there a few weeks before we went, but it warmed up to a more bearable -12C. Unlike the Alpine resorts they had plenty of snow early on and a little more came during our stay.

Getting there was a bit of a trek as we had to go from Heathrow to Helsinki on BA then catch an internal flight on Finnair to Kittilä, so that was a whole day of travelling. We stayed at the Saaga hotel. We had a nice appartment, but didn't do much cooking. We had their generous breakfast and dinner buffets, but the latter could get a bit repetitive with variations on fish in a sauce or reindeer. Their SaagaCarte restaurant had a much better selection, but at a much higher cost. They also had a good pool and a gym if you felt the need.

They have quite a few ski runs, but nothing too exciting. In fact their black runs are more like a red elsewhere, but you could ski all day with hardly any queues on really good snow. Nothing was too carved up. The kids had a few lessons and were soon accomanying us up to some of the middle runs.

Overall it was an excellent holiday and we could well consider going back. If you don't want to ski their are several companies providing snowmobile, husky and snowshoe expeditions, but these can get expensive for a family. We didn't see the northern lights at all and missed the lunar eclipse as we were travelling back.