Fantastic Finland!

Emma Lewis and family head north and experience a wintery world with a magical air about it

‘Narnia!’ I say to myself as I take in the slightly eerie mid-afternoon half-light illuminated by floodlights twinkling across the snowy slope, and the fir trees beyond, heavily encrusted in icing-like, frozen-solid snow. ‘I knew this place reminded me of something.’ I half expect to see a friendly faun step out of the trees at the side of the slope, but am instead jolted back to reality by the rest of my family coming to an unruly stop on their skis beside me.

It’s day one of a February family half-term ski trip to Ruka, in Finland’s Lapland – very close to the Arctic Circle – and I’ve been reading the CS Lewis classic, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, to my two girls, aged seven and five. I remark to the girls how I feel like we’ve stepped through the wardrobe, and they agree, their imaginations running riot, too.

SNOW SAFARI