Swedish Lapland adventure: Aurora Hideaway Dinner
Bev Fearis joined a Swedish Lapland adventure with www.VisitLapland.com, a new website and one-stop booking portal to help travellers and agents check availability and book activities from across the Lapland region of Sweden, Norway and Finland. Here’s part 1 of her blog.
We stayed at Pine Bay Lodge, a family-owned hotel which sits on the edge of the Bothnian Sea just north of Lulea. The Lulea archipelago has 1,300 islands, with only 100 residents, and in the winter the water freezes up to a meter thick, allowing visitors to enjoy various activities including snow-mobiling and dog-sledding.
On our arrival night, we were treated to the hotel’s special Aurora Hideaway Dinner. Our guide, Tommy, came to meet us at the lodge at around 7pm and took us to a warm shed to get us kitted out with our overalls, gloves and balaclavas. We snuggled under the blankets on the sled as Tommy’s snow mobile pulled us across the frozen arctic sea, under the moonlight, to our remote restaurant for the night. It was just us and the stars.
It was amazing how warm the hideaway hut felt compared to the minus 28 temperatures outside, especially once Tommy had stoked the fire and lit the candles.
Tommy then turned his hand to the outdoor fire to cook our dinner, while we drank red wine in front of the roaring fire inside the hut and took turns to venture outside to take photos. We weren’t treated to the Northern Lights (they were yet to come) but it was still magical being surrounded by nothing but the snow-covered ice landscape under the moonlit sky. It was utterly silent, save for the crackling fire. Tommy served us tasty fish soup, followed by giant steaks and the biggest baked potatoes I’ve ever seen. Dessert was a berry crumble.
The next morning we enjoyed a typical Swedish breakfast of cereal, yoghurts, crackers, cheese and hams before setting off for our next icy adventure at the sister hotel, Brandon Lodge.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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