Today is Cross-Country skiing day! I have wanted to do this forever and so I booked us into a cross-country ski safari tour. They’ll teach us how to ski and take us on a tour of the area.
Diana and the kids were not looking forward to today, so it was a struggle to convince some younger members of the family to get out of bed at all!
After breakfast we took the gondola into town and walked across to the meeting point. We arrived 3 minutes late and there was no-one there. Whilst we’re wondering what to do, the tour company calls and tells us that the guide has left already and we’ll need to make our own way there. The lady makes it sound like it’s a long way and is worried that we’ll not find it, so wants to send the guide back to get us. She hangs up and calls back a few minutes later to say we should make our own way there. No problem, where is it? Around the back of the building!
2 minutes later, we’re in the store room getting fitted out for kit. The boots are more comfortable than alpine ski boots, but the guide insists we wear extra socks on account of the -20c today. She runs out of extra socks, just as she gets to me, so instead I get a set of hand warmers to put inside.
With the group kitted out, we all pile outside into the car park for the briefing and then we take a short walk down to the lake to get started.
I didn’t really know what to expect, I certainly didn’t expect to have grooves cut into the snow for us to traverse along. Apparently there are two styles of Nordic skiing, traditional, which is what we are doing, and skating style, which is what I’ve seen people do before. The conditions were perfect however — cold, crisp, bright blue sky and not a breath of wind.
It was pretty straight forward to get the hang of it, just swoosh along the tracks, it was harder to keep your balance once you built up some speed, but it was good fun and not really hard work at all!
The whole family loved it and Alex enjoyed it so much he was racing ahead.
After a couple of kilometers, we stepped off the track for a break and some obligatory hot berry juice. We all agreed we’d like to do more in the future - a far cry from this morning’s grumblings.
On the return journey we moved to the front of the group with another family that wanted to go faster and started to pick up the pace. We got so far ahead that the guide was out of breath sprinting to catch us to ask us to wait!
A thoroughly good time was had by all, we only wished we could have skied for longer - there’s always next time.
After we stowed our gear we said our goodbyes and walked back into town to find some lunch. The kids wanted burgers and I’d seen a place the other day which was supposed to be very good, Boneless. The burgers were very tasty and the kids were in heaven. Sadly they only operate in Finland, as they had ideas about eating there more often!
After lunch we switched back to Alpine skiing and enjoyed a circuit of the resort before hot chocolates and back to the hotel.
Dinner was the usual buffet followed by an early night, we were exhausted after an exciting day!