Heading for the Arctic... on our tin-tent voyage
Tim Moore joins an intrepid – or perhaps mad – band of caravan fanatics as they head for Finland
Finnish Lapland in March isn’t an obvious backdrop for a touring holiday. In the far-flung settlements, every low-rise concrete roof stands thickly wigged with a full winter’s-worth of snow.
Between them yawns a monochrome wilderness, bleak white plains under an iron sky, dark pines dolloped in puffy icing, clustered around frozen lakes.
By way of sightseeing rewards, there’s an encounter with the Northern Lights if you’re lucky, or one of the region’s umpteen ‘official Santas’ if you’re not.
Two years ago, I rashly set out across this unpromising landscape on a bicycle. My aim was to follow the route of the old Iron Curtain – almost 9,650km, from the deep-frozen tip of Scandinavia to the Bulgarian Black Sea.
Having somehow completed this journey, beginning with more than 1,600km of snowbound, massively sub-zero Finland, I felt well qualified to join an equally improbable Arctic expedition.
I joined a group of others embarking on a whirlwind endurance challenge with a pair of Bailey caravans and a 25ft, twoberth motorhome, venturing to the far north through a dozen increasingly nippy countries.
After a less challenging journey by plane and taxi, I join the convoy at the conclusion of its outward journey – the little town of Ivalo, 233km inside the Arctic Circle.
‘Wake up in a hotel, and you could be anywhere,’ says Martin Dorey, gazing out at the frozen wastes from his plucky motorhome’s threshold. ‘Same telly on the wall, same breakfast buffet downstairs.’
Dorey, one of the group embarking on this epic quest, is the presenter of BBC2’s One Man And His Campervan and author of several tin-tent cookbooks.
He continues: ‘In a caravan or camper you’re right there with nature and the elements. It’s a primal thing. There’s a bigger picture, and you’re in it.’ And that picture is never the same. ‘A couple of days ago, I was standing in a T-shirt, looking out at a sunny Baltic beach,’ he adds.
The Finns are a hardy and implacable race. They barely batted a frozen eyelid as I slithered very slowly through their lives on my bike on my earlier adventure. One of the few natives to express any curiosity about my endeavour drew up alongside in a rusting Audi as I repaired a puncture in a roadside snowdrift. ‘A bicycle is a bad idea,’ he mumbled neutrally through the window.
By the same token, the trio of foreign-registered tin tents lined up at the front of Ivalo River Campsite seems invisible to the snowmobilers filling up at the neighbouring petrol station. The fact the campsite is even open at this time of year – the temperature fell to 14C one night – speaks volumes about the national character, and the Finnish definition of holiday weather.
Later, looking out through the frost-rimmed window of the Santa’s Hotel restaurant (reindeer pizza is on the menu), I spot a Finnish motorhome hooked up to the mains in the car park. ‘Yes, we have many like this coming all year,’ says the waitress when I point at it. Later, some of the Arctic adventurers and I wonder if the tin-tent vibe taps into the familial cabin-in-the-woods that is such an ingrained Scandinavian tradition. At the Ivalo campsite, it becomes clear over the days that many of the rental huts dotted about us in the snowy forest are occupied. One, no bigger than a Wendy house, is home to at least three Finnish voices.
My crowning challenge – after two nights staying at the nearby Lapland Hotel Riekonlinna – is to spend a night in the motorhome, but while building up to it I spend two days discovering what winter-bound Lapland has to offer visitors too old to get excited about Santa.
The answer is rather a lot – and certainly more than I’d realised when cycling through the region. The Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort is home to a dramatic, arch-roofed ice chapel and a cluster of bijou, glass-domed, two-berth guest igloos, pitched at the romantic Northern Lights enthusiast (€500 a night – maybe another time).
We go on a snowmobile safari, speeding across the frozen Ivalo River, then more gingerly through the forest opposite, mittens gripped around the heated handlebars.
There’s a slightly Top Gear afternoon spent putting the motorhome and caravans through their paces on the ice tracks at Ivalo’s Millbrook Winter Test Centre. After a preparatory lecture (‘If reindeer appear – don’t
Every day ends in a hot cupboard – the sauna. There are more saunas than cars in Finland
be afraid, but be ready’), the instructors say they’ve never had a caravan on the ice before.
I’m expecting a slithery shambles, but to universal astonishment the car-and-caravan combo outperforms the solo car. And of course, every day ends in a stupidly hot cupboard – the sauna. There are more saunas than cars in Finland.
Some hours later, I’m finally hunkered up in a sleeping bag at the end of my Bailey Autograph 75-2, fresh from a bracing return dash from the shower block.
Indoors it is a balmy, wood-lined cocoon. The outside conditions express themselves through a thick frosting of ice on my over-bunk skylight, foiling hopes of a Northern Lights bed show.
In the morning the sun is out, and the cold, grey world on my doorstep is recast as a shimmering winter wonderland. Further away, smoke coils up from the campsite’s barbecue tepee: Martin Dorey is at work on a sensational scallop chowder that will push the boundaries of sub-zero alfresco catering.
My Iron Curtain ride, more by accident than design, established the bicycle as ago-anywhere, do anything machine. Watching Do rey stir his cauldron, I reflect that this trip has performed the same service for the humble holiday home on wheels.