CALIFORNIA FREEZING

The Arctic. Minus 20°C. Sounds just about perfect for a TopGear minibreak in a VW California. Fire up the auxilliary heater...

- TOM FORD

I've seen the northern lights in full force before, and it really was a gently gobsmacking moment, waves of greens, yellows and reds blushed across the night sky in watercolour washes, wonder reflected in the backs of eyes. At the spring equinox, some 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle and 12 miles from the Russian border with Finland, camped on an ice lake as far from artificial light pollution as I could reasonably get, I thought I had a chance of a repeat performance. Nope. There's nothing. Nada. Zilch.

It's -20°C, I can't be bothered to put on enough clothes to go outside and it wouldn't matter if I did - the sky has been painted institutional grey by clouds intent on Valium views. Still, we hoped for the lights, but what we're actually here for is an untypically deep dive into whether or not the new Volkswagen California camper is actually any good at big miles and random semi-extreme camping, and how aggressively this Ocean spec can defend a price of more than £80k. So far, so unhypothermic, I’m already counting it as a win.

We began, some 700 miles ago, in Helsinki. A longer than anticipated supply run in an absolutely enormous Finnish supermarket for vital survival foods (mainly Jaffa Jims and coffee, the Jims being indigenous Jaffa Cakes, you have to be adventurous in foreign climes), before barging our way to Kempele, just south of the larger town of Oulu for a quick ’n’ dirty overnight.