Family winter activity holiday in Finland
| country: | Finland |
| location: | Finnish Lapland |
| departures: | 2008: 13 Apr |
| price: | From £1045 - £1095 (5 days) per adult and from £710 - £825 per child (8 - 14 yrs) including flights from the UK. Extra night from £80 per adult and £50 - £60 per child. This trip can also be booked without flights. Min age 8yrs |
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the amazing things you'll be doing
This is without doubt one of the best places in Lapland for combining active wilderness experiences with rest and relaxation.
A stunning lakeside location, probably the purest air in Europe, spa facilities and excellent winter safaris are but a few of the highlights. Located on the shores of beautiful Lake Jerisjarvi you have a choice of accommodation between 27 en-suite bedrooms and 40 lovely winter cottages all with their own sauna and fireplace.
The hotel has 27 Scandinavian style bedrooms all of which have a private shower and toilet room as well as a clothes drying cupboard, TV and telephone. The excellent restaurant overlooks the lake and serves traditional Finnish dishes as well as international cuisine. The bar, with its open fireplace, is the perfect place to relax before dinner or why not wind down in the lakeside spa?
The spa is the ideal relaxation area after an active day outdoors. You can lie in one of the two small heated pools while enjoying views of the snow covered lake. After a day in the winter cold you can warm up in an electrically heated sauna or test the real Lappish wood heated smoke sauna. For the really adventurous (some would say mad!), there is a 25-metre illuminated ice pool, which is kept open throughout the winter.
The high quality winter cottages vary in size sleeping from 2 to 6 people. Imagine returning to a warm fire or a private sauna after a day in the wilds of Lapland. Each cottage has a lounge/kitchenette, sauna, shower and toilet room, fireplace, drying cupboard and TV.
A stunning lakeside location, probably the purest air in Europe, spa facilities and excellent winter safaris are but a few of the highlights. Located on the shores of beautiful Lake Jerisjarvi you have a choice of accommodation between 27 en-suite bedrooms and 40 lovely winter cottages all with their own sauna and fireplace.
The hotel has 27 Scandinavian style bedrooms all of which have a private shower and toilet room as well as a clothes drying cupboard, TV and telephone. The excellent restaurant overlooks the lake and serves traditional Finnish dishes as well as international cuisine. The bar, with its open fireplace, is the perfect place to relax before dinner or why not wind down in the lakeside spa?
The spa is the ideal relaxation area after an active day outdoors. You can lie in one of the two small heated pools while enjoying views of the snow covered lake. After a day in the winter cold you can warm up in an electrically heated sauna or test the real Lappish wood heated smoke sauna. For the really adventurous (some would say mad!), there is a 25-metre illuminated ice pool, which is kept open throughout the winter.
The high quality winter cottages vary in size sleeping from 2 to 6 people. Imagine returning to a warm fire or a private sauna after a day in the wilds of Lapland. Each cottage has a lounge/kitchenette, sauna, shower and toilet room, fireplace, drying cupboard and TV.
day-by-day itinerary
| Day 1: | Flights, Arrival and Transfers. You will be met on arrival and transferred to your accommodation. After settling in, it’s just a short walk over to the main building for a welcome meal. |
| Day 2: | Reindeer Safari. We drive to the old Lapland Manor where our local reindeer herder’s family has lived since the 19th Century. There will be a short film presentation describing the importance of reindeer in Lappish life before visiting the reindeer farm. At the farm you can practice your lasso technique before setting off in a reindeer pulled sleigh for a 3km safari. Lunch is served by an open fire in a traditional Lappish kota. We return to the accommodation after lunch where there will be time for snow activities within the grounds such as tobogganing, snowshoeing and cross country skiing. |
| Day 3: | Cross-Country Skiing, Snowshoeing & Ice Fishing. The cross-country skiing trails start next to the hotel. Your guides will teach you the basics of this remarkably easy discipline before taking you on a guided skiing trip across the snowy landscape. After lunch you don your snowshoes and head onto frozen Lake Jerisjarvi. Your guide will lead you to a designated fishing area where he or she will drill a hole through the thick ice. Everybody can then try to catch dinner in the traditional fashion - good luck! |
| Day 4: | Snowmobiles and Huskies. You will try two widely contrasting forms of winter transport today. Firstly, you will receive instruction and a safety briefing from your snowmobile guide before speeding off on a 20km safari to a local husky farm. Once at the husky farm, you will meet the dogs and learn about their lives before driving your own team into the white wilderness of Fell Lapland. En-route, you will stop for lunch around an open fire. On returning to the husky farm, you again jump on the snowmobiles for the journey back to the hotel. |
| Day 5: | Departure, Transfers and Flights. After a few action-packed days, it’s time to bid farewell to your guides before the transfer back to Kittila Airport for your return flights. |
travellers' tales
The final day of motor sledge run and husky dog sledging (but whole trip was well done and paced) leading up to that day. (more)
small group family holiday
This is a 'small group family adventure' - typically you will join several other families and travel in a group of approx. 16 people. The trips are great value and a great way for you and your children to meet new people! While itineraries are pre-planned there is some flexibility and you'll have plenty of time to yourselves. Most adventure kids tend to be aged between 7 and 15, but some are younger (minimum age 5) and some older (perhaps travelling as part of a larger family group). Please check with the operator to confirm the minimum age for this trip how this holiday makes a difference
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Tourism in Finnish Lapland has become the main income source of employment and income replacing traditional industries such as forestry. Development from a period of extractive industry to an industrial society has come about quickly. In 1950 the largest part of Lapland’s inhabitants lived in rural areas and more than half the workforce worked in forestry and agriculture. Today 65 % of the workforce are in the service industry, 22 % in processing and 10 % in primary production.
This huge growth in tourism and service provision has been developed in conjunction with a long-term sustainable tourism plan with one of the primary objectives being to maintain nature in its natural state while guaranteeing the traditional way of life. Much of this has been achieved along with membership of EU development programmes, aimed at diversifying sources of livelihood, effective usage of resources and to increase export.  Approximately a quarter of Lapland’s 100,000 strong workforce was unemployed in 1997. Promoting entrepreneurship, ongoing re-education of the workforce and development of the educational system to suit the needs of enterprises is continuing. The target is to diversify the sources of livelihood, increase the value of refinement production and develop new enterprises particularly in the area of tourism. National measures as well as EU-programme measures support this objective. We embrace this philosophy, employing local activity providers and using only locally owned hotels. In this manner we help to maintain jobs in an area where unemployment was, until recently, very high. Additionally, the use of local suppliers ensures that the tourism spend filters through to local economies via the tourism multiplier effect. |
Tourism can be good and bad for destinations & local people. We carefully screen every holiday against our criteria for responsible travel. 'Look behind the brochure' to find how each holiday makes a difference (see left). We don't claim to be perfect - there is no global accreditation - but we've lead the way since 2001 and screened 1000's of holidays. We invite every traveller to write a review about their experiences and responsible tourism. This valuable feedback is sent to the people who run the holidays. We keep a very close eye on it and take off holidays that don't live up to our standards. |