MOTORING TRAVEL - FINLAND - DRIVING THE ROVANIEMI ICE ROAD TO THE SNOWHOTEL

Beginning it on a road made entirely of ice is an interesting start. Its official title is the 'Ice Road Crossing Kemijoki' and it's maintained by the village association of Ojanpera-Paavalniemi in Rovaniemi with the help of contract workers and a voluntary user fee. Locals operate the 400-meter crossing between December and March each year, measuring the ice by drilling and regularly ploughing the road. We crossed it in unseasonably warm temperatures for February (0 degrees C) and, rather alarmingly since we didn't have 4WD, it was already starting to rather substantially melt.

The Finnish roads once across didn't seem as if they would be that much easier for our front-driven Skoda Kamiq hire car to negotiate, with thickly-packed snow generally untroubled by any attempt at salting or gritting. It doesn't seem much needed: the Finns drive major snow-packed routes at much the same speed ordinary Europeans would travel on tarmac, concerned not so much about skidding but the local wildlife.

In Lapland apparently, there are only two kinds of drivers; those who have hit a reindeer and those who have yet to hit one. There are over 4000 reindeers killed on Finnish roa...