In an infamous episode of his popular TV show ‘Man vs. Wild’, well-known adventurer and Chief Scout, Bear Grylls, strips naked and plunges into an icy river in a bid to escape the Arctic wilderness. He also harvests fat from a dead seal, paraglides across a frozen lake and spends the night outdoors in a trench. Luckily, you don’t have to be quite as tough as Bear to learn some essential survival skills (and, rest assured, our tours are a lot more fun than dragging a frozen reindeer carcass through thick snow!).
One of our favourite excursions (highly recommended by travel specialist, Hannah) runs from Sweden’s ICEHOTEL. You’ll head into the depths of the woodlands surrounding Jukkasjärvi to learn how to survive in this beautiful yet hostile environment. Your experienced guide will show you how to understand your surroundings and use them to navigate through the wilderness. You’ll find out how to find food and shelter in extreme conditions, which plants are safe to eat and how to start a fire with a flint before heading back to the hotel to warm up.
The tour is available all year round and you’ll be given your own flint and a specialist Eldris knife, so you’ll never have problems lighting the BBQ again. We can also organise fishing trips in summer and ice-fishing in the winter and you can learn how to forage for mushrooms, vitamin-packed berries and other edible plants at several of our resorts. Hot coffee and local pastries are often served as part of these trips so you will be well looked after while you are out in the wilds.
If that doesn’t sound quite enough of a challenge and you want to ‘be more Bear’, then why not try a week-long extreme survival course in Northern Finland? In this remote area, you could come across brown bears, wolves, lynx and wolverines and the environment will test you to your absolute limit all year round. You must be very fit and healthy to undertake this challenge and you may need to take a shorter bushcraft course first to demonstrate your ability to cope. Ask us for details of this specialist trip.
If all of that sounds far too exhausting and you want nothing more challenging than a roaring log fire and a bottle of champagne on ice then, don’t worry, Arctic Direct is still the place for you. We can arrange luxury accommodation, private transfers, gourmet meals and plenty of excursions where you simply need to sit back and enjoy the ride.
So, whether you want to push yourself to the max or just relax, give us a call on 01793 939035.
Bear Grylls’ Arctic Circle adventure is from 2009 – season 4, episode 9 and available to watch on Amazon prime video.
