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I could think of nowhere more perfect. I wanted the antithesis of my urban life; I wanted fresh air and gentle wilderness; I wanted to go foraging for mushrooms in the forest, not queuing with my ready-made Chicken Madras at the supermarket; I wanted a canoe on a lake, not a car in a traffic jam; I wanted green and blue, not grey and grey. And I wanted to unwind. I decided to take my family on a summer holiday in Finland.

Friends were shocked at my choice. 'Finland!' they sneered, as if I had suggested going to Scunthorpe for a fortnight in a tent during a storm. 'What are you going to do in Finland - watch the rain dry on the windows of your log cabin?' My family greeted the news with something less than enthusiasm. My boyfriend thought the beer would be prohibitively expensive, and my five-year-old had been making a determined bid for Disneyland. 'What am I going to do in Finland?' she moaned. Convinced that they would be miserable and shivering through August, they packed two suitcases of sweaters, and with buttoned up shirts and buttoned down tempers ('I'm not going!' screamed my boyfriend the night before we left, downing what he thought would be his last bottle of Becks for a fortnight), we departed for a wooden cabin in Finland's central Lakeland, exporting our family feud with us.

Finland has a great many of a very few things, like a poorly stocked local store. There are lots of lakes -maybe 30,000, perhaps 50,000, no one really knows. There's simply too many to count. And these lakes are surrounded by even more cabins, known as mokki, all wood on the outside and Scandinavian design and efficiency on the inside, with banks of stainless steel electrical kitchen equipment, specially shaped knives for absolutely everything from butter to reindeer meat, and excellent communications. Finland is most famous as the home of Nokia, and however remote you are you cannot escape their mobile phone network. In each of these cabins there is also a sauna, one of 1.2 million, one for every four members of the homogenous population, so they never get crowded. And each cabin is surrounded by an endless forest of mighty pine trees, each one exactly the same height, like a giant army of bottlebrushes.

My daughter was an instant convert. When you're five, there's nothing more fun than walking out of a log cabin, down a soft mud path to a small wooden pontoon that belongs to nobody but you, and jumping naked into a tepid lake, creating the only ripples. And we adults reverted to the joys of childhood, as being without a Benneton bikini makes your body act babyish. I found myself splashing my boyfriend and attempting handstands on the silt bottom of the shallow lake. I shook myself dry like a dog, and rolled in the pine needles that cushioned the earth. We canoed across the lake, through the water reeds which the Finns make into small pipes. Ducks landed on the water about us, less afraid than we were. My daughter trailed her hand in the water like an oar. We pretended we were Swiss Family Robinson, surviving in the wilderness all on our own, picking mushrooms as big as dinner plates from the path down to our pontoon.

Even my boyfriend soon discovered the attraction of a Finnish holiday; the possibilities for wearing nothing at all were endless. It wasn't only us who were keen to throw off our city suits and urban combat trousers. Everyone we met seemed very eager to take off their clothes with an astonishing lack of embarrassment which made my ever-so-English heart quiver. When I knocked on the door of the neighboring wooden cabin in search of some milk, the woman waved at me from the door of her sauna utterly naked. I had never met her before. Not knowing how to address a naked next door neighbour, I ran off back to our identical cabin and took my coffee black for the evening.

We had to go into the nearest town of any substance - Kuopio, the capital of northern Savoland - to see people clothed. And here everyone seemed to be dressed in near-identical tracksuits, as if a nation of joggers. Leisure is big business in Finland. For a small town, Kuopio has a huge number of bike shops, sports shops, gun shops and, of course, sauna shops. But, unless there was a good display in the window, we would have had no idea what they were selling. There's nothing whatsoever guessable about the Finnish language. Even vital signs are not only unpronounceable, they're indecipherable: try kekusta (town centre), opastus (information) and vessa (toilet).

The one word we soon learnt was muikku - tiny, tasty fish from the lakes, which are dipped in flour, fried in giant woks in Kuopio's central market square and served with a mound of fried potatoes. There were stalls piled with pyramids of different coloured berries - deep purple blackcurrants, scarlet strawberries, pink lingonberries and bright orange slushy cloudberries. Track-suited women riffled through the mounds of wild mushrooms, checking for tiny worms. There was dill, beetroot, small new potatoes, and fresh peas so sweet you could eat them raw like little green candies. My daughter liked to pod them each night at the wooden table in our cabin. All the produce was local. There was nothing as exotic as an orange. I saw a few lemons, sold individually wrapped like a precious fruit.

Finland is made up of 99.5% Finns, and Finns like everything Finnish. When choosing a holiday, they almost always go to their favourite destination - Finland. Most families have a second home, a mokki just like ours. And if a 'Traditional Finnish Evening' is advertised in a hotel or restaurant, it will be attended almost exclusively by Finns.

Rauhalahti resort, just outside Kuopio, offered one such evening. And like all such events, it began with a sauna. The sauna at Rauhalahti, as big as a small barn, boasts of being the largest wood fired sauna in the world. Just like the Inuit have several words for snow, so there is a whole language in Finland around the sauna. There are many different types of sauna, which emit different heat in different ways. The savu, or wood smoke sauna, is supposed to be the softest heat of all. It's rather like a very smooth cigar. There was a stern sign outside Rauhalahti's savu sauna; everyone must, absolutely must, take off all their clothes. It's considered not only unhealthy but improper to wear anything at all.

Sauna protocol is strict; it's best to go accompanied on your first Finnish sauna experience. I went along with Merja from the Kuopio tourist office, who happily stripped off in front of me as if we'd known each other for years. It's impossible to imagine a representative from the Aviemore tourist board agreeing to spend a couple of hours stark naked with a visiting journalist. Marja explained how the towel I'd been given was only for drying myself; the sheet was for wrapping around me. How you handle your sheet is very important; it must not get wet, a near-impossible task in a sauna dripping with water. And the bunch of birch trees, known as vasta, Merja coolly explained, was for whipping each other.

Merja demonstrated how to throw water from the buckets onto the stones, so a wave of intense heat rushed over us. It was very dark inside the sauna, and the other naked forms sitting on the wooden tiers around the stones, were reduced to smudged outlines. It was impossible to make out any anatomical details through the smoke. Somehow, the sauna managed to be a scene of nudity and flagellation without any hint of sex.

The Finns have the right attitude towards a sauna. They talk loudly to each other while sweating it out; there's no reverent hush. And it's nothing whatsoever to do with being healthy. There was beer on tap in the women's changing room, and, in case you brought your own, they kindly provided a bottle opener. Between ten-minute long sessions in the sauna, most Finns went outside for a cigarette break, sitting on a rustic wooden bench looking at the late sun playing on the lake.

The sauna was followed by a Traditional Finnish Meal and dancing. We were the only non-Finns there. The Lonely Planet guide had warned me about Finnish parties. There were, said the guide, three types. 'When it's official, people dress properly, act muted and look serious. When it's religious, they dress properly, act muted and look serious. When it's unofficial, they dress casually, act light-heartedly and look serious.' Our party was obviously an unofficial one. Everyone was dressed in their tracksuits.

In one corner of the restaurant was a mighty stuffed bear, in the other an even larger stuffed elk. My daughter was hoisted on top for a ride; she wasn't missing Disneyland at all. Mournful songs were played on the accordion while we ate dishes that were entirely pink; the favourite traditional dish is hot smoked salmon smothered in a berry sauce. As the evening progressed, the accordion player moved on from more traditional tales of woe to sing the theme tune from Love Story in Finnish. Nothing seemed too mournful for a roomful of Finns. The other partygoers rose and softly shuffled about the wooden boards, enjoying themselves with a stern face. Then Merja began to lead a letkajenkka - a Finnish conga - around the restaurant. This, I realised, was close on riotous behaviour in Rauhalahti. And just when we were ready to retire, everyone else seemed to be cheering up considerably, keeping awake by drinking vast amounts of coffee. The Finns consume an average nine cups a day - the most prolific coffee drinkers in the world. It's astonishing that they're not all seriously hyper, instead of being simply serious.

Most nights didn't end so energetically. Pleasantly weary after a day dipping in the lake and paddling between the reeds, we'd retire early to the solitude of our log cabin. As the sun set, we'd begin the steady rhythm of the close of our day, my daughter podding the peas for supper, my boyfriend opening a bottle of - what in fact turned out to be - very reasonably priced Finnish beer. After my daughter fell asleep, we'd have one last sauna, and run down to the pontoon for a final dip in the lake. The creak of the wooden pontoon was such a sad, lonely sound. The wind whistled through the forest so gently that we could still hear the burps of the fish breaking water on the still lake. We were all sorry to be leaving Finland. We'd had such fun.

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