Take nothing away from the hot magic of the tropics, the waves and perfume of a palm-fringed beach, but for me, the strongest holiday enchantment is ice-cold. Perhaps it’s a northern hemisphere thing. There are a surprising number of people – my fair-skinned son is one of them – who get heat rash at the mere idea of a beach. I like tropical weather too, but there’s something about deep winter that’s transcendent and otherworldly. The cold itself is invigorating. The first few chilly breaths clear your head. Your mind becomes espresso-sharp. Unlike soporific heat, the cold calls you to take up healthy outdoor pursuits. It’s not just skiing, there’s skating across frozen lakes, dog-sledding, ice-fishing – perhaps even a swim.

One January about 10 years ago I jumped into an ice hole in the River Dnieper in Kiev for a dare. It seemed like a bad idea until I’d done it and came out wild-eyed with feel-good endorphins. Now it’s become a habit that I have trouble explaining to people who have never tried it. 

Another winter I shared a memorable immersion with some Cossacks in the frozen Don outside Rostov on the Feast of Epiphany. One of the great joys of winter holidays is getting cold and enjoying the delicious contrast with the warm that follows. The reset from cold to hot might take place in a pine-scented Finnish sauna, or Japanese onsen, or in an outdoor hot tub in Iceland from which you can catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights moving slowly across the sky like a green silk veil. Cold also demands its own high-calorie cuisine: fondue, elk stew with dumplings, hot chocolate, gluhwein. And how well you eat and sleep after a day in the fresh cold air! 

Above all, the cold has a special aesthetic. Snow and ice cast a particular spell on a place. Just as the wicked fairy sedates the palace, the princess and the courtiers in the fairytale Sleeping Beauty, deep winter administers knock-out drops to the stress and business of ordinary life. When the celsius dips to minus 40 in Russia’s Verkhoyansk mountains, it locks the place under a charm of cold. Everything becomes slightly surreal: laundry freezes rigid on the line, smoke rises from chimneys and then flattens out and moves sideways. Stacks of blue ice stored beside houses turn out to be the water supply. 

The snow is not only beautiful, twinkling under the low yellow sun, but it also creates a vast acoustic blanket. The resulting silence is as perfect as the fresh untrodden snow. One etymology for the word Siberia is that it comes from a Turkic word meaning sleeping land. That strikes me as exactly right, since the most perfect winter holidays have the haunting quality of a remembered dream. Here are 20 inspiring holiday ideas to create your own winter-filled memories.

Marcel Theroux

Go to the extreme

Mush yourself in Finland

For a properly authentic Arctic adventure, travel as centuries of locals have done before. On Mountain Kingdoms’ self-mush hut-to-hut husky-sledding trip you’ll drive and care for your own team of hard-working dogs, traversing the frozen lakes and tundra on the edge of Finland’s Pallas-Yllas National Park. By day you’ll cover up to 40km of sparkling terrain, by night you’ll warm up in wilderness saunas and bed down in log cabins, totally off-grid.

How to do it: A seven-day Husky Sledding Arctic Adventure costs from £2,395pp including flights, accommodation and meals. December 26, 2021, March 13, 2022 (01453 844400; mountainkingdoms.com).

Stomp crowd-free summits in Slovenia 

Slovenia’s Julian Alps are Europe’s oft-overlooked mountains, equally as beautiful as the peaks further west (especially in snow) but far quieter. Much Better Adventures’ winter hiking weekend here explores idyllic areas of this peaceful range by snowshoes. Yomp via densely forested valleys, frosty plateaus, 2,000m-high summits and remarkable ridges that afford views of the Triglav massif; finish up in warm and welcoming mountain huts, where hearty home cooking and free-flowing schnapps await.

How to do it: A three-night guided Winter Hiking in Slovenia trip costs from £484pp including accommodation and meals, excluding flights. January-March 2022 (020 3966 7597; muchbetteradventures.com).