And so it Begins

The slopes are open.  It was a mission getting up them though.  Winston Churchill knew what he was on about when he said ‘France, a great country wasted on the French’.  Here they are with 300km of maintained slopes, 2 glaciers & all within 10,000 hectares of pristine mountains.  It’s been here forever, unsurprisingly it was the English that brought the world skiing as a recreation, but being France they like to do things their own way, which is invariably slowly.  I don’t know how long Val D’isere has had chair lifts which you need a ‘ski pass’ to use but it must be over 50 years.  In all this time, year after year there is estimated to be around 30,000 people a day using these lifts during peak times.  You would of thought they would be able to sell (for actual real cash) these lift passes without too much of a problem.  We didn’t, but we were very, very wrong.   1^st we were told it would take 5 days to process our lift passes as we are seasonairs & need a 6 month pass.  The ticket office didn’t open 5 days early so that we could ski on the opening day.  No the lazy tw#ts didn’t open till the day before, at 4pm.  But they still couldn’t get us a pass because they did have the right paperwork.  They told us come back in the morning & it would be sorted then, she also said we needed to photo for their records.  I had some passport photos but the wife didn’t so we asked where we could find a photo-me-booth type arrangement.  There isn’t 1.  Anywhere.  We thought this a bit odd so we produced my photos.  ‘Oh no’ she said, ‘we don’t need them it’s done on a web camera’.  Why make a fucking point of needing photo’s when you don’t need fucking photo’s.  We went back the next day and it being France we took every single piece of documentation with us (they didn’t tell us we needed it but they love a bit of red tape, the French), they wanted our works contract (we don’t have a job), our proof ownership of property (we are renting, as are the thousands of other residence) the French equivalent of National insurance (we not fucking French) & a breakdown of our genetic code (I might of made that last 1 up, but the rest is true).   We finally managed to convince them that we just wanted to buy the season long pass (the kidz who rep & other such tw#ts get a discounted rate, we knew we couldn’t get this so we weren’t even trying to blag it) after taking down every single piece of information our sad little lives have ever produced & a good hour we eventually got our passes.  Let me remind you that they would have to do this many, many thousands of times, it’s not just because we’re English either, all the French people were having exactly the same problem & they would of been doing it every year of their lives.  Any way anyway, enough of the Chris Moyles style rant (as in, long winded & un-funny), we’re here for the mountains & now we can get to them.

The 1^st afternoon up on the slopes was a tough, tough ride.  Visibility was terrible, it was -20 plus a 30mph wind, the slopes were hard & patchy, lots of ice & mounds of powder, I was hungover & my boarding was shite.  We stayed out for a few hours then called it a day after I face planted into a pile of Ice on a flat run.  Incidentally, this wasn’t the 1^st fall of the holiday.  Whilst in the apartment Skyping the Sister-in-law from the comfort of our sofa the wife got up & on her way to the kitchen she tripped over the power cable & landed flat on her face & smashing her remaining good knee, she has a habit of falling over (ask anyone who knows her about the sign outside a busy pub!) but somehow this wasn’t as funny as normal. 

Sunday was a much better day.  It was only -10 degrees very little wind & we could see.  We was without hangovers & got up the mountain early to enjoy a full days boarding.  We went to a different area & the conditions were actually pretty good.  I’d swapped & tweaked with my snowboard so it was all set up for a fat lad on hard snow & we had a brilliant day.  We stuck to mostly green & blue runs where the snow was best & we soon got back into the groove of carving out some tidy turns & we finished it all off with a few beers in a lovely little bar at the end of the day.  This is what it’s all about.  & to top it all off, we beat the Scouse 2-1 with a 94^th minute goal from the little lad Lennon.  Life is good.  I’m not going into work next week, too much snow!