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Our aircraft's wingtips traced endless, snow-laden pine trees. It was early afternoon in February and the sun was dwindling. Unlike the carefully man-managed forests of Western Europe, there were no boundaries to hem in the vast spaces below. The trees stood jaggedly uneven in size and widely spaced: so fleeting is the summer that a pine can take a century to mature and must fight for every ray of light. If there was a thriving ski industry down there trying to beat the landscape into submission, I couldn't see it.

We landed at Kittila in Finnish Lapland, several hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle. The coldness was raw and instant, the wind chill breathtaking; yet the pilot had reported an unseasonably warm daytime high of -9C. The airport was one short runway and a spartan arrivals hall on a rink of compacted ice. As I trudged across the apron, I imagined myself a defecting spy and half-expected to find George Smiley waiting at passport control.

I'd embarked on a seven-day ski trip in the Finnish resort of Yllas. Like its sister resort Levi, Yllas has a truly arctic winter. In October some lakes freeze thickly enough to be navigable by truck and maps show seasonal roads crossing their waters. In December, the shortest day yields 46 minutes of light. The ambient temperature can drop to -50C.

In Manchester, I'd foolishly decided to get Euros from a Finnish cash machine to avoid commission. Finland was after all a keen new member of the EU. I then discovered that neither Kittila nor Yllas possessed such novel technology and I boarded the airport bus with 4 to my name. With two large beers costing a truly Scandinavian 15, this was a problem. As my hundred-item Visa statement would demonstrate, so common was this dilemma for locals and tourists alike that packets of chewing gum and bus tickets could be paid for by credit card without fuss. The armchair explorer really could survive an arctic winter with two skis and one piece of plastic.

I hadn't come to Yllas as a ski aficionado. I'd skied once before in the popular Swiss resort of Crans-Montana. I fancied myself an intermediate skier because I'd survived my own inept enthusiasm. Better skiers than I told me that Yllas, whose slopes rise from 200 to 700 metres, didn't offer enough diversity or challenge to engage the advanced skier for long.

It did however offer a friendly learning environment, largely free of the competent but intolerant central Europeans cramming Alpine slopes. When my black runs ended in

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