Sweden; home of the elk, a thousand lakes and a relaxed attitude to nudity. Åre, a small skiing town up a mountain 400 miles north of Stockholm and about 150 miles below the arctic circle. I went up there in January 2007; it's a short flight, or a seven-hour train journey from Stockholm to Åre, guess which one I did?
I caught the train! of course I did, stupid not to. Mind you, over 7 hours in a ricketty thing that wouldn't look out of place in a John le Carre story might not be the most luxurious way to travel...
One of the first stations we stopped at was Gävle, home of the festive goat! I was very excited and braved the three second stop to take a photo.
You can always count on a foreign country to produce an amusing sign; whether this one is telling you not to release your windypops or offering "Titwanks ahead", it's good to know that the Swedes think of everything.
To say that the mountain we were up was a mite chilly would be an understatement; the outside thermometer read "-12°C", and it got down to -25°C with windchill at the top of the hill. Brrr.
Have you blown a seal? No, it's frost on my moustache. Just to prove how cold it was, here's a picture of me with a beard full of ice from breathing out.
An attractive picture of the sunrise over the hills. Not to worry, I wasn't up too early, the sun only really came up at half 8.
The weather was perfect for skiing though, as the sun came up, it reflected through snow blowing across the frozen lake to produce rainbows; very pretty.
The snow was good, fresh and deep. Half a metre or so had fallen over the previous few days and there was plenty of good skiing.
Åre has lots of picturesque runs through the trees. Possibly not very good to snowboard on, but excellent for a relaxing ski down to the restaurant for a lunch.
And lots of really good places to eat. For 60SEK (about £4.50) you can have a slap-up Pytt i panna feast and as much coffee as you can drink. Magic.
As the old joke sort of goes, "I don't know how fast an elk can run, but he must have been moving when he hit the wall!"
A brief excursion off-piste here, in big mode this photo is great, but even here you can see how skiiers were making use of the whole of the slope. We're just about in the tree-line here, which is 900 meters above sea level.
A slightly more taditional piste downhill. The lake in the distance is where the town is. In summer you can swim in the water, at this time of year though it's frozen solid with a good layer of snow on for crazy snowmobile action.
the Swedes love a good sauna, and when you're there in the winter it's traditional to run out into the snow and roll around after a good steam. just to show I did it, this is my post-sauna arse print in the white stuff outside...
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