Bonjour
Well who knew the season moved that quickly. We did our last couple of runs today and took our hire boards back. They were largely unnecessary, but gave some closure to the Winter's 'boarding exploits. We actually had one of the best days of the season last Wednesday (our final day off) when it absolutely dumped it down for two days before affording us uninterrupted sunshine for a day. There was no-one on the pistes and we smashed some serious "pow" both on- and off-piste.
Our last week was actually a culmination of all the things we'd learnt work-wise over the season: 16 guests in a mixed group with all kinds of dietary requirements. The final full day's 'boarding similarly drew on all our experience for maximum fun and antics. We revisited all our old favourite runs, whilst taking in some off-piste all around them: Belette, Comborciere, Arandelieres, Grand Col/Refuge, Bosses, L'Aigle and Ecureuils. The first couple of runs down Ecureuils were absolutely amazing. We even managed a black run we hadn't done before from the Varet lift, Dou de L'Homme, although I tried smashing myself into the ground a couple of times on the way down.
I think my favourite runs this season have been:
1. Belette - Never had a bad run down this quick red. Loads of accessible off-piste both sides, generally reassuringly consistent and fast!
2. Comborciere - Seriously hard work at times but great fun, pow or no pow. Always moguly, quiet and far too hard for the chumps. Also provides the "deep burn" that make your thighs feel like real pros. Hardcore.
3. Ecureuils - Our "finisher" most days, and the last run of the season. Not a particularly difficult black, but very enjoyable, with tree-lined top and vertiginous bottom section.
We had a lovely few last weeks and, overall, have been blessed with pretty decent guests. This is good because we've also had a huge number of them. The fact that we were still packing 16 people in on our last week sum up our occupancy rates pretty accurately. Got to have averaged 13 or 14 guests a week for 17 weeks (so probably around 220-240 clients overall). I've learnt a lot of names surprisingly quickly: most Saturdays I learn all the guests names within a couple of hours of their arrival, however bizarre they may be). Even at the end of the season we were learning how to do things a bit better, or differently, to amuse the guests or ourselves. This one-off cheeseboard is such an example, resulting from a smooth and quick dinner service with a slight excess of cheese to use up.
This season I've probably made around 200 chocolate mousses, cleaned about 360 toilets, been to hospital 5 times (3 different ones for myself, not counting the one we just walked around in Chambery before going to the correct one in the city centre), poured away a year's worth of wine, done some serious snowboarding in all kinds of conditions (from -27 to about 20 degrees in powder, ice, slush-porridge, cardboard, and regular snow), and worked between 70 and 90 hours a week. Tough going, but a hell of an experience. I never want to see Hungarian goulash or mini blinis ever again.
Having listened extensively to RFM, I now have recent experience of most of Phil Collin's back catalogue, Michael Jackson's "Thriller," Toto's "Africa" and lots of things by Maroon 5.
Anyway, back to the last few weeks (which I'm yet to furnish you with the details of). The Moomahs visited, which was absolutely awesome. We did cross-country skiing, drinking tea, sitting on a sofa (more impressive than it sounds), watching a French "You've Been Framed" marathon, and went up in any number of telesieges. This was all the more impressive considering my Moomah is mortally afeared of heights/being more than jumping distance away from the ground. It was good to show them the joys of mountain life, although (as we had 15 guests) we suffered from a little lack of sleep. Still, we got to drink wine, eat tarts and generally live like normal people after around 2230.
The snow came and went, and came back again. It's been a good season in that respect, but apparently lacking some of its usual sunshine.
But now we're all done. The chalet's pretty spotless and we're enjoying a little time to ourselves before we start the tandem journey. We're very excited about it, and really hope people haven't forgotten about us and throw a couple of quid into the charity pot. I may well add a few more things about our snowy season in Peisey-Vallandry as I recall them, but for the time being this is pretty much the end. We've snowboarded hard, been the best chalet hosts most people have ever seen (their paraphrased words, not ours), and lived the mountain life for 5 months. I think we'll miss it. It has been epic.
Wooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
We've actually definitely bought a tandem this time. It looks a bit like this, but possibly in burgundy rather than racing green.
Firstly, I should really make mention of the huge amount of help we've received from www.snozel.com
in buying our Viking Ascot. They've provided excellent service along the way: reserving us the bike with the supplier as soon as we enquired, altering their website to accommodate our specific requirements (being in France etc) and generally keeping us informed of what's going on at all times. They've also shown a genuine interest in our upcoming escapade (word surprisingly relevant) and been very friendly and helpful. So, to answer all of the following questions: "Has anyone used snozel.com?" "How good are snozel.com?" and "Are snozel.com the best tandem supplier on the internet?" The answer is yes, definitely. Oh, and the prices were more than reasonable too.
Anyway, paean of praise aside. We have a tandem, and are cycling (UNSUPPORTED) back to Manchester from Peisey-Vallandry in France. We'll be camping along the way and have no real concept of how long it'll take (or how far it is - recent estimates are in excess of 900 miles). We hope to visit Annecy, Verdun, and Brussels (in Belgium), but these are only our initial thoughts. Mostly we hope to raise a little bit of cash for our chosen charities at www.virginmoneygiving.com/team/snow.
We also hope to visit a few places/people along the way through England, and hope that the trip can be as rewarding for the charities as the effort will be for us.
Anyway, we're excited, and a little bit scared. But hooray for actually having bought a tandem, it should be with us within a fortnight!
I'll leave you with a completely unrelated picture from our trip to Bourg-St-Maurice last Wednesday. I found it amusing. It's almost like being in Cambodia. Let the phrase enter your general lexicon (e.g. Are you going for some fasty-fooding?)
Evening all.
Today we went over to La Plagne to see what that's like. The answer is quite busy and full of skiers being directly in my way. We did get to ride the Vanoise express, which was surprisingly quick and underwhelming, and help a crying child who had fallen (and could not get up, despite all his crying).
There should be new rules for the piste, which include:
1. Do not stand in a line across the piste, especially where it is quite thin
2. Do not stand still on flat parts of the piste, as snowboarders cannot gain momentum in these areas
3. If you do need to teach people how to ski, use half the piste when "snaking" about, not the whole thing. Children will be maimed under our boards of steel.
4. If you want to stop lots, or ski in a group, don't do it on a thin, mogul-y black run!
There're probably more rules.
Felt a bit better this week. We're "owning" it more, and not stressing out too much. The benefits of experience. It'd be cool if people could come out to see us in this new year. Speaking of which, the New Year's "event" was a bit sporadic, rushed, unplanned, interspersed with the odd firework and rubbish. Had a few drinks though, which was nice.
Also, getting more bounce in my legs for moguls, and liking snowboarding generally. Fall down a lot less, and even when I do it seems to be pretty amusing.
I've taken fewer photos this week, and not uploaded any. So here's a photo of the one thing that gets me through most days, and makes me feel like Hawai'i even when surrounded by washing up and drudgery.
Yeah, I'm in Norway. On Saturday, after a delicious breakfast 
of small sausages, scrambled eggs and Swedish meatballs, I attended at Kiruna train station again to get a bus to Norway. There were still no trains and the bus took over 5 hours to go 175km. However, this included two trips in special snowplough convoys. When the weather is awful, the cars line up ready to be led through the crazy snow by snowploughs. This involves a lot of waiting and a lot of following other cars, but it is quite cool. In Norway you have to have special winter tyres which have metal studs in and allow driving on pretty dangerous conditions. Norway is very snowy.
There's not really too much else to say. I'm probably learning interesting things all the time, mostly about snow, ice, cross-country skiing, military systems and political inactivity in Scandinavian countries. Also, I've seen a very interesting German WW2-era transport plane (Junkers Ju-52) which spent some 40 years in the fjord before being pulled out, shipped around a bit, and brought back to Bjerkvik for restoration. It's very cool. In similar news, tomorrow (Monday) I plan to visit the Narvik Peace Museum, which is all about war. Other important points include: underfloor heating in a bathroom is one of the greatest inventions known to man; you can't get rid of snow, you can only move it around; a chair/walking frame/sled is called a spark and it allows quick-sliding progress to shops, cafes and other local attractions; Bullfinches are NOT Robins; the whole of Kiruna needs to be moved because of the iron ore mining which is undermining the foundations of the city; the Kiruna to Narvik train line was developed to allow the ore to be transferred easily to a saltwater port that doesn't freeze in winter; and Ju-52s are made predominantly of aluminium, look like train carriages with wings and were affectionately known by the Wehrmacht as "Tante Ju."I'm hoping to possibly do some cross-country skiing whilst here (despite the length of the trip being somewhat shortened by delay), but am otherwise simply enjoying walking about in exceptionally thick snow, having lengthy discussions and drinking far more coffee than a person really needs.
That's right. You heard (in a non-aural way). Sweden.
I'm way behind writing up my travels around the UK cities, although I will catch up at some point. In the meantime enjoy this frighteningly up-to-date blog from Northern Scandanavia.
I left Manchester on Wednesday morning and caught a flight from Liverpool to Stockholm Skavsta at lunchtime. Liverpool airport is much improved. Previous experiences of queueing indefinitely to empty one's pockets before being touched all over by a scouser in a uniform were marginally adapted by the removal of the indefinite queue. However this may've just been due to the novelty of the new security area, its subsequent honeymoon period, and the relatively low number of flights (to low-quality Spanish destinations) running in March. Otherwise the airport maintains its half-built, run-by-volunteers, catering for the Stella-drinking masses "feel" it has always had.
Arriving in Skavsta I then had to get a bus to the train station (the bus didn't accept cash, only credit cards, for approx. £2.20) and a train to Stockholm centre, over one hour away. If flying to Stockholm, factor in the extra hour or so and £12 fare each way to the city, then you might not have to use Ryanair. The train was a double-decker though: they're cool and prevalent in many countries. All things should be double-deckers, including Desmond Dekker's albums (2 cds perhaps).
Stockholm is lovely, and you can eat without mortgaging your/someone else's house. The station was being developed in a rather haphazard fashion, but the wooden seats I had so enjoyed in 2001 were still there, and still as enjoyable. The police were lining some youths up against McDonalds' window for some reason. It was fun.
The train left on schedule at 21:22 to travel through the night, arriving at Boden (halfway up Sweden) the next day, where it would be necessary to change for the trip to Narvik in Norway (my ultimate destination). My anticipated time of arrival was 17:00 on Thursday; a long trip all said. This went fairly well and, although the train was late to Boden, the connection was held back so all passengers could board. The train arrived in Kiruna, 3 hours distant from Narvik, at approximately 17:00 on Thursday. I'm still in Kiruna. It's 19:00 on Thursday. I'll be here tomorrow.
There had been, and continues to be, blizzard conditions in Norway. Here the weather has been clear and lovely. The snow is thick all around and today I accidently stepped off the beaten track up to my thigh in the thick white stuff. It's quite cool. Unfortunately between Kiruna and Narvik there had been an avalanche on the train line. Everyone was told to attend at the basic City Hotell that evening to sleep and attend at the train station the following morning at 6.15am for the first (of three) Northbound train. The first train was cancelled: I went back to bed. When reporting to the station for the second train (which brought new passengers to be gently disoriented), I found it was replaced by buses, but only for destinations as far as Abisko (a popular ski-resort) and Bjorkliden. Lots of people left. The rest of us were told to go to the (much nicer) Scandic hotel where, after a few minor decision changes, the stranded had delicious free lunch and checked into the hotel for the night. No more travel today.
Fortunately this left some time to explore Kiruna, which is a lovely, small, ore-mining city. The church is a gorgeous wooden affair with gold statutes on the roof. There's very little else to see. I had some foreseeable problems with walking through snow (which is apparently between one and two-metres deep) and enjoyed thoroughly the ice sculptures around: the Ice Hotel is fairly nearby.
Whilst here I have discovered a number of (interesting) facts. The city has a theatre which is open around a day a week. Kopperberg and Rekorderlig have 7% alcohol versions (expect them in stores near you soon). Whilst beer can be sold in supermarkets all other alcohol (wine, spirits, cider, etc) can only be sold in the special booze shop, of which there is only one per district/county. You can buy whisky essence in normal shops, presumably to flavour your moonshine which is illegal to make, but fairly common practice, like in the Dukes of Hazzard. I may get to see the aurora borealis up here, and they are able to forecast good instances of the "Northern Lights" so you know when to look out. You can watch English "Night Cops" on terrestrial Swedish television. The Swedes have 40 different words for "indefinite rail delay" none of which I understand. According to a Swedish advertisement featuring the eponymous rock gods, "kiss" means something else in the native language, namely (after some research) piss.
So, to surmise, I'm in Sweden. I should be in Norway. There's thick snow and reindeer memorabilia everywhere. I'm staying at the pleasure of SJ (Swedish Rail). Swedish transport systems are much better than Scottish ones (Scotrail particularly) and actually take responsibility for delays/inconvenience caused by them. The future is otherwise unclear.
