STV weatherman Sean Batty reckons Iceland is a great place to chase the Northern Lights

Tripping the light fantastic in Iceland.

“Four years ago, I did a programme where we flew out to Iceland hunting the Northern Lights.

I’ve been back three times, as chasing the Lights has become a bit of an obsession.

Iceland is a breathtaking place, with its glaciers and volcanoes.

Every time I go to the Blue Lagoon just outside Reykjavik. It’s like a Scottish loch, but warm, with this amazing light show above.

I always stay a couple of hours outside Reykjavik, going self-catering, which keeps the cost down.

As does picking up food from the supermarket rather than eating out every night.

There are only a quarter of a million people in Iceland so away from the cities the skies are pitch black.

I went to Tromso in Norway last month, because it’s right in the Arctic Circle and the Northern Lights were just amazing.

They were there every single night and were so strong they were reflecting back off the snow on the ground.

The sun was never above the horizon, so you just had two hours of daylight and two hours of dusk.

The highest temperature was -10 degrees and it went down to -20.

As a meteorologist I’m obsessed by the weather and I now find I want extremes and cold rather than hot.

I know most people are desperate for a bit of sunshine at the start of the year but I’m on the lookout for somewhere cold.

I’m already starting to think where to go next January. But I have been to hotter places, including Icmeler in Turkey, which was gorgeous.

And just last summer I went to Madeira, where the weather is quite strange, in that you get gale force winds and sunshine.

We went to a Thomson resort that had opened up in the east of the island.

While we were there one of the festivals was going on, which was good timing as there was a real party atmosphere.

And we did one of the island’s traditions tobogganing down the road from this quaint hilltop village.

The guys on the back knew what they’re doing, but there was a lot of screaming!”

Sean Batty is a familiar face as STV’s weatherman. The 32-year-old Paisley-born Sean joined the Met Office and presented the weather for several BBC stations before coming back to Scotland. He is STV’s best-known weather presenter and has has hosted a number of other programmes for the station.