Ohta Park

The appeal is a full country resort half an hour from St Petersburg, set in the forest. Visitors note the modern lifts, including a heated chairlift, and a spread of slopes that works for beginners and confident skiers alike. Beyond the skiing they like the year-round ice rink laid out among the trees, the pools, the evening lighting and the general tidiness. There is rental, cafes, cottages and a hotel on site.

Cost is the recurring complaint: paid entry, paid parking, expensive rental and steep cafe bills appear in roughly every other review, and the hourly charging for slope time instead of a day pass irritates people further. The second issue is throughput: over the New Year holidays the queue just to drive in stretched to an hour and a half, and toilet queues ran half an hour. Late in the season the slopes deteriorate.