SNOWSPORTS IN YELLOWKNIFE, CANADA

Some parts of this glorious world are so strikingly different and exotic that you just have to see them for yourself, to behold vistas and feel sensations so foreign to your past experience that it feels like you’re on another planet. For an ordinary lad from the dreary UK city of Birmingham now living in the sunny paradise of Australia, Yellowknife is one such place.

I first heard of Yellowknife from a throwaway line in an angry punk song about gentrification 20 years ago, but the name and the context stuck in my head as the archetypal place to get away from society and all its associated ills – a vast, frozen land of endless purity and bitter cold. Visiting Canada during winter took a long time to reach the top of my to-do list, but when it did, there was no doubt that this amazing location would be on the itinerary.

The small city of Yellowknife, population 20,000,