Country: England, Finland
Distance travelled: international flights
Weather: rainy, overcast

We were up by 6, showered and bundled into the car and at the airport by 7.30am. Manchester has some of the strictest security I’ve ever experienced in all my years of flying. They have some new scanning system to check your boarding pass as you enter security which, of course, didn’t work with my ticket so I had to be passed through via a gate where a man looked at my boarding pass and wondered aloud why it had the boarding time printed on it while his data gave him the departure time for our flights. How on earth should I know? Maybe they need to get a better system ? Or at least a better printer at the check-in. Some other official confided to me that they often have this trouble with Finnair tickets.

Then a very long line where a recorded voice repeatedly warned us that if our 100ml liquids weren’t in a bag then they would have to be in our already check-in bags or we would loose them! Bit late, people. The final thrill came when I didn’t pass the metal detector check and ended up getting frisked and wanded. The security wasn’t this strict in the US when we visited there.

3 hours flight from Manchester to Helsinki, about an hour in Helsinki and then almost 2 hours to Kittila and then, after aimlessly wandering around the airport to find our transfer driver, nearly an hour drive to Muonio to our hotel, Harriniva, which I believe may be a ski resort. We were checked in, introduced to the tour operator representative, Katrina, and were just finishing our dinner when Katrina rushed into the dining area to tell all there that there was a very faint aurora visible down on the river. We jammed on what we hoped was the minimum requirement of warm clothing, grabbed the maximum requirements of camera gear and joined the flood of people down to the frozen river.

Although I didn’t see anything with the naked eye, as I had trudged the slippery, icy road back up to our room for the second tripod we had brought, when I got back Mark showed me the images of what he had seen. He says the lights weren’t as vivid to the naked eye compared to what the camera had caught with a 20 second exposure but he was still pretty chuffed with the results. We stood around for nearly an hour taking photos and discussing settings with different people. Mark got some good advice regarding his ISO settings and shutter speed from another serious photographer and I was advised by an English gent not to leave any filters on the camera as they would interfere with the results. All advice was greatly appreciated and taken on board.

We went back to our room and downloaded and drooled over having such success on our very first night, gloating slightly since Katrina had mentioned that there hadn’t been anything seen for nearly 6 weeks. We rugged up again late in the evening and ventured out to see if there was any more but no luck. On the way back to our room we realized that we hadn’t taken into account the time difference of two hours between Finland and England and that we were trudging around in the dark at 12.45am. Our beds were incredibly comfortable.

Aurora - Finland-13

Aurora - Finland-16