Our starting point has really been quite surprising. You'd think a mountain station well within the arctic circle would be a bit sparse, but the reality is far from it.

As you may have guessed, I have electricity and internet. We have a room to ourselves, heating, hot and cold water, the extravagance doesn't really stop. They're also serving restaurant quality food, which is a bit weird. Lunch was mussels and a variety of salads. Tea (dinner, whatever, argue amongst yourselves) was a herb crusted chunk of lamb belly with some strange green reduction to start and apple soured cod for main. Three course meals and the same selection of obscure beers I drink back in manchester wasn't really what I was expecting.

I imagine we're being lulled into a false sense of security and the next week will be the cold, hard, chop-your-own-wood-and-survive-on-miscellaneous-stuff-in-tins experience that we were expecting.

Or it's about to be a week of luxury, take your pick.

What we do know is that we'll be tackling it on snow shoes. We went for a 5k or so walk to see what it was all about, and it seems that everyone around here is cross country skiing. We're quite the novelty for attempting this trail on foot. The staff here have recommended snow shoes to stop us from sinking knee deep in snow all the time. Seems sensible. I foresee a good few days of tripping over my own feet though, I'm not used to walking around with something the size of a baking tray attached to each foot. Certainly not a baking tray covered in spikes.