Winter Swimming World Champs - Part I

We Brockwell Icicles recently upped our game considerably when we fielded an 8-strong team (all girls, the boys being too disorganised and scared) to the Winter Swimming World Championships! This event occurs every 2 years and is the place to be for cold-water nuts across the globe. It took place this time in the city of Rovaniemi, right on the Arctic Circle in Finnish Lapland!

Gosh, where to even begin? Well how about Herne Hill station, 6.30am on Wednesday 19th March, for taxi to Gatwick? You can already see the excitement in the eyes of Clare, our wonderful leader, organiser and general carer for the trip:

Clare in the community

Also starring Talya (camera-shy, fast swimmer), Liz (of recent Margate trip triumph) and regular mischief-makers Sara and Candy:

The adventure begins

...all due to meet at Gatwick with Icicle Noelene and friend Biba, who for better of worse had cast in her lot with us to become honorary 8th Icicle.

Oh and not forgetting David's much coveted Rab jacket, which Sara had shamelessly appropriated for the trip:

Raberdashery

Transported to Helsinki by aeroplane...

...we could have gone on to our destination by the same means. But where's the fun in that? Thanks to brainwave by Clare, we were booked upon a sleeper train <gasp of awe and excitement>

The train was a glorious, thrilling two-storey affair, with a bunk bed and dinky little fold-away sink area in each compartment, plus plenty of long windows in the corridors for admiring the views. Hopefully this little clip gives the general idea:

Naturally we made straight for the bar, a cosy and characterful carriage where you half expect to see Poirot taking a tisane in some unobtrusive nook.

Blond bombshells Noelene, Sara and Biba

Icicles on the loose

Talya enjoys on-board entertainment

Then back to sleeping compartments where we all piled onto Noelene's bed for a Finnish picnic:

Local brew

Trailing crumbs we find our beds, laugh ourselves gently to sleep and awake refreshed 7 hours later to find ourselves in... LAPLAND and THE ARCTIC CIRCLE!!

Hello Rovaniemi!

A sunny start with air temperatures a bracing -15 degrees (in the pic above my fingers are already starting to hurt after just a couple of minutes' exposure). Taxi to our home for the next 4 days - another stroke of genius by Clare: two lovely apartments just outside city centre, each with its own little sauna!

Home sweet home

Sauna!

Bags deposited, we made for the town centre on local bus:

Bus timetables - Sara wisely opts to steer clear

Time for coffee in downtown Rovaniemi - at the excellent Coffee House on Lordi Square (yes, so named in honour of the monster rock band who won Eurovision for Finland in 1996), where cappuccinos come in steaming soup tureen-like mugs and the Finnish delicacy of cardamom buns (which have an extra pat of butter on top, just to make sure) abound.

Down the road to check out the river - actually the confluence of two rivers, the Kemijoki (the longest in Finland) and the Ounasjoki. For all this joki it looked pretty serious to me, huge and almost completely frozen, except in the middle where large ice sheets were breaking off. Hard to imagine we'd be swimming in there tomorrow - after recent sunshine and 10 degree waters at the lido, this all suddenly seemed a bit hardcore <gulp>

Sara on thin ice

With butterflies in our Icicle tummies we went to register and then headed over the bridge to check out the race area, Candy needing more than a little encouragement as nerves started to kick in...

"Come on Candy, you know you want to do it really"

"But I don't, I really don't...Help!"

Poster girls

Arriving at the race area, my tiny mind slightly boggled. For it was literally a 25m-long oblong cut out of the river ice, divided with lane ropes, and a ladder down into the water at the ends of each lane. Sure, there was a cafe-restaurant, stalls selling pancakes and coffee, changing cabins etc. But all were merely satellites to that big ol' hole cut into the black river. Slightly thrilling but mostly terrifying!

Races were held over 4 days, and apparently over 1,200 people from forty-something countries were here to compete. The first day was reserved for the Endurance Swim - 450 m (18 lengths) which, at -1 degrees in the water, is a serious undertaking. You certainly won't catch me doing it. We were dismayed to see one man, in his 70s, get pulled out seemingly unconscious in the very first race and stretchered off to the ambulance. We later found out he'd suffered a heart attack, but thankfully had been revived. Not the most auspicious start to proceedings, adding to our mounting sense of impending doom.

We cheered ourselves up by getting to know the locals:

The afternoon's entertainment was most excellent - not only a trip to the city's very cool science and Finnish history museum, the Arktikum:

But also Noelene discovering that she'd had her trousers on back to front the whole day:

As for the evening - well, what an adventure! For we were all booked onto a snow mobile safari to try and track down those elusive Northern Lights. First, time to get kitted up in the latest snow safari/bank robbery clobber:

The plan was to head north for about an hour to get away from the light pollution of the city. So after a quick safety briefing by our very patient safari leader we set off in a line, two to a snow mobile. I found myself at the helm of this rather powerful and unpredictable machine, with Talya as my passenger behind.

The throttle and steering seemed to have a little joke going on to make me sporadically veer towards the trees, which only got scarier as we entered the twisty turny woods. I clung on desperately, tensing every muscle in my body and repeating "don't kill Talya, just don't kill Talya" under my breath. I think everyone else enjoyed it though!

After what seemed days we arrived at a large teepee, where our guide lit a fire in the middle to make tea and cook sausages.

As we gathered round he told us all about the Aurora Borealis, from the science (charged particles from the Sun hitting the Earth's upper atmosphere blah blah) to the traditional belief that a mythical 'firefox' running away causes the light display by hitting the snow with his tail. (Presumably the Southern Lights occur whenever Internet Explorer crashes). Apparently we had about 50% chance of seeing them on this night but, alas, not a sausage (apart from the actual sausages).

A much more enjoyable journey as passenger on the way back (except for one bit where we almost veered into the icy river - thanks Talya), then home for important night's sleep before.... RACE DAY #1...