Last week I saw the northern lights. Not once but twice!! Wow!! Now if you'd said to me just before Christmas 'you'll see the northern lights next year' I probably wouldn't believe it. On balance there's not a huge chance of seeing them, it's not like they're in the sky all the time and even when they are it need to be super clear and you need to be away from bright lights. It also helps a great deal if your somewhere near the north pole, the arctic circle ideally.
So here's how it came about. After much planning and diary juggling, fitting in around guide centenary parties, training speech and language therapists and avoiding half terms a date was settled for a last minute skiing break.
As Drew and I trawled last minute dot com comparing various holidays in Italy and France we spotted a package to Finland in the same price band. 'Finland, for that price, what's the catch?' was the cry. We booked and got what we later discovered must have been the last two spaces in the chalet. Phew, lucky...
As it turns out there was no catch at all, not really, just a tiny one about the shared bathroom but on balance not eve worth mentioning, in fact I wish I hadn't...
On with the story of how luck really was a lady for our Lappish winter wonderland holiday.
The first of our holiday lucky breaks was the wonderful people we shared the chalet with. Knowing that we were only two people in a chalet of 12 raised a little apprehension about who the other guests would be. Maybe a group of fun loving students or part of a rugby tour? Luckily our fears were not realised. We were delighted to find that our chalet mates were 5 couples all wonderful people who we were delighted to go out to dinner together with on our last night.
Another bit of luck was the wonderful chalet hosts at chalet Polar Star, Claire and Craig. Every night we had a wonderful 3 course meal with wine to share with our fellow chalet guests. Both Claire and Craig were keen to help out as much as possible and make our stay in Finland a memorable one.
The next lucky break or should I say a good decision on our part was to use our small excursion budget on a 10 kilometre husky safari. What an amazing thrill!! Whizzing along behind a pack of strong, fast and frankly quite mad dogs was wonderful. It really whet my appetite, so much so that maybe a trip like this might be in order in the future.
On the Wednesday of our week we were lucky to see the northern lights. After almost 2 hours stood outside with the temperature at -27 we were treated to a showing from the lights and one of the brightest showings we only noticed when I turned back to talk to Drew and spotted a sweep of green in the sky behind us. Lucky yes, but not the luckiest...
On Saturday all of these wonderful pieces of luck came together. After working hard all week keeping us all fed and watered Claire and Craig took the night off to relax. This left us to choose where to go for our dinner. We decided to join 6 other chalet guests for dinner in a local pub. After being stunned by the cost on the bill of 4 beers we tumbled out warm and well fed into the arctic night to find a huge green sweep of light across the sky. Over the next hour or so we stood outside amazed by the changes and the flashes of light. Description can’t do the spectacle justice. Neither can photographs really but if you’d like to have a look then click here to look at some photographs.
So that’s the story of the lucky breaks that turned a last minute deal into a once in a lifetime experience. And all that was before we even talk about the skiing...
Lucky us 
