The time between being roped in and the trip coming round seemed to disappear, along with money on various things such as clothing, insurance and then hire and lessons for the week itself. We were going to Alpe D’Huez in France, apparently one of the better resorts for beginners such as myself (and most of our group) with plenty of green runs, but also with enough more difficult runs for the more experienced members of our group.

So it was on the morning of the 21st of February that a few of us met at London Bridge train station at the early time of 8am (which was especially early given my going out the night before…. whoops) such that we could head to Gatwick. Our flight wasn’t until noon though, so once we got there and checked in this left a few hours to kill. Still, the flight was fine and we even got a meal, which was unexpected given that the flight was only 90 minutes, before landing in Grenoble.

Once in Grenoble we walked to the shed (there’s no better description for it really) that is arrivals, and proceeded to wait about two hours for our bags to come off the plane, before we got on the bus for the two and a half hour drive up to the resort. This drive took us along part of the Tour de France route, which winds its way up to Alpe D’Huez via 21 hairpin corners, which was bad enough on the bus so I dread to think what it’d be like to cycle. Once at the top we got to our chalet, and went to collect our ski hire before some food and then grabbing some sleep ready for our first morning’s skiing.

The first morning started with a load of us attempting to find where the ESF (who we had our lessons booked with) met and therefore getting to our lessons. Once we’d managed this we were split into various groups, with the majority going off with one instructor and me and one other from our group joining another few others in the slightly lower group (or, as we termed ourselves “Team Special”). We spent the first day practicing our snow-plough so we could actually stop, and everyone fell over a couple of times (especially when they had us doing little hops). After a rather expensive pizza lunch we tried our hands at a few other slopes, one of which was clearly a bit too much for me as I ended up off piste and in a foot of snow (probably for the best given I had no control). A few games of pool filled the evening, with Matt and me taking the undefeated record for Warwick. Not that we wasted our time at uni in the bar playing pool. Honest.

Day two saw us learning how to turn during the lessons, and then having lunch at the top of the Marmottes 1 lift (2300m). Another valuable lesson was learnt here, a “large coke” is actually a litre, and cost 11€. I didn’t order one of those again. The afternoon was spent on slightly more sedate runs than the previous day, and was much more fun as I didn’t feel like I was completely out of control. That night a few of us ventured out on a bar crawl, and explored the old town a bit better with beer and shots in a number of different bars that lead to plenty of amusement and not so much sobriety.

The next few days saw us learning more control in the lessons, and slowly increasing our speed and the difficulty of the runs before finally on the Thursday afternoon I gave the blue run down from Marmottes 1 a go. This was great fun, and I only fell over twice right at the top. Sure it took us an hour to get down (compared to about half an hour for the others) but I was happy that I’d made it.

The last day skiing saw us collecting our certificates of completion of the lessons and then a nice relaxing afternoon skiing, including making it back to the chalet without having to walk in our boots – which was a great improvement on previous days. The evening started with a 5-course meal (including frog’s legs) and then continued with the anticipated drinking, including watching the France – Wales six nations game, various games and Jaegertrains, before we headed back to the chalet and got some sleep before returning to the UK.

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed the trip, and am hoping to be able to get another week in before my annual insurance policy runs out early next Feb!