@duncancraig_
‘You’ll feel like you’re flying,’ the excitable guide had told me over a bottle of something potent and Swedish the previous evening. I’d hidden my cynicism with a smile. I wasn’t even sure what I was doing here, to be frank. Ice skating? Wasn’t that all sequins and Boléro, mulled wine and festive mayhem? No, as it turned out. The following morning found me racing across a lake surface so flawless that merely stepping out onto it had taken a giant leap of faith. Some 10m below, bathed in bright winter sunshine, every pebble and reed of the lake-bed zipped by in spectacular high definition. They call this ‘glass ice’, an ephemeral phenomenon born of perfect water clarity and ideal conditions. For outdoor skaters, it’s as good as it gets – Centre Court, on the opening day of Wimbledon. Our group of beginners had found it on Lake Vättern, the biggest of Sweden’s estimated 100,000 lakes, and we weren’t about to waste it. A few inexpert chops at the pristine surface with my blade-fitted boots and I was racing once more (the speed-to-effort ratio is pleasingly skewed). I sucked in lungfuls of frosty, supercharged air and took in the epic vista of vast, sparkling lake fringed by snow-dusted forest. With my group duckling-ing far behind, there was nothing to interrupt either progress or train of thought; the only sound, an occasional bullwhip reverberation of a fresh crack in the ice reminding me that – despite what all my senses were telling me – I wasn’t, in fact, flying.