The white stuff

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5 NOVEMBER 2004
Tom Cruise has his Telluride getaway, Antonio Banderas and wife Melanie Griffiths have a stunning cabin in the mountains. Both are the sort of winter retreats that dreams are made of.

If you can't invest in a little slice of snowy wonderland yourself, there are heaps of great vacation options around - even if you don’t ski!

Snow Castle, Finland
There are now several ice hotels, including those in Quebec and Swedish Lapland, but the turreted fortress with drawbridge and battlements on the Finnish coast tops the lot. Kemi SnowCastle has its own SnowHotel - complete with polar sleeping bags - within its walls, as well as a Snow Restaurant serving Lapp delicacies on tables made from ice.

In the snowy Children’s World playground kids can have fun on the slides and hills, in tunnels and in the snowball pool. And if you feel like getting married, no problem – tie the knot in the Snow Chapel, with several hundreds of tons of sculpted ice overhead.

There are bags of activities laid on, from snowmobiling to husky driving, but if you really want something different, take a half-day cruise on an ice-breaker that pushes through pack ice up to eight metres thick. You may even feel brave enough to try ice swimming – dressed in waterproof thermals, of course.

Snowboarding, France
If you want to join the growing band of boarders, you’d better bone up on your goofys, regulars and half-pipes. That’s all snowboard speak, one of the hottest languages on the slopes. The good news for beginners is that snowboarding is easier to learn from scratch than skiing – but you’ll still need plenty of padding to avoid bruises.

The snowboard capital for all levels is Morzine Avoriaz in the French Alps, where the slopes are wide and you don’t have to worry about taking the short route home off the side of the mountain.

You can stay in cosy chalets with open fires and licensed bars, where there’ll be "learn to ride" packages for beginners and off-piste boarding with a Scottish champion for experienced riders. The chalets also rent out equipment and have their own hunky “mountain hosts” to show you the ropes and the slopes. And if you can’t persuade your partner to tread the board, there’s a full skiing programme, too.