Ice Driving in Sweden (2027)

Three nights in Swedish Dalarna, guided, with two full days of ice driving on a frozen lake.

The lake is the thing. Sodra Lotsjon has been used for ice driving since the 1960s, when it served as an official Volvo testing facility, and it has been a stage of Rally Sweden, so the surface and the layout are both the real article rather than a car park with cones on it.

The base is near the ski resort of Salen, and the two driving days work across two groomed circuits, the outer one over three and a half kilometres, with slalom and doughnut areas alongside. The cars cover front, rear and four-wheel drive, which is the useful part: the same corner in each teaches more about weight transfer than a week of reading. A session in a fully prepared Group N Mitsubishi Evo rally car with one-to-one instruction follows, and the programme closes with a King of the Ice challenge in evenly matched cars, which is as close to competition as most drivers get.

The return travel and accommodation, both full driving days, the Evo session with a dedicated instructor, breakfast and lunch each day and the airport and lake transfers are all included; some dinners, alcoholic drinks and travel insurance are not. Winter is obviously the season and the dates are set by the ice. Four days is a short break rather than a tour, and ice is the best surface there is on which to learn car control, because everything happens slowly enough to correct.