Annual Ski Trip

The annual skiing trip starts as it always does with dropping the dogs off at kennels. It’s a glorious morning and if the weather stays like that it will make it more pleasant for them. Unfortunately the weather has no plans to stay like that.

Our flight is a 5pm one from Heathrow but the journey down goes well and once parked, Swiss Air shows us how smooth check in can go. They don’t ask us to print our own boarding passes, they don’t even require tickets as our passports are enough and don’t blink with the extra luggage we have due to our skiing equipment.

Once landed in Zurich, a few minor issues arise. The car hire company yet again refuses to give us the size of car we’ve booked and we end up ‘upgraded’ to a Renault Scenic. Totally impractical for skiing. Then we fail to find the Holiday Inn we’ve booked into. The hotel’s own directions are hopeless and I can’t get any internet on my phone. Eventually, after a lot of driving around in circles, we stumble across it. We get a room on the top floor for 'reward club' members and settle in for a few Dunkels.

Day two we head off to Engleberg where we will be skiing for the first few days. It doesn’t look very snowy and it takes us a while to find where the slopes are. Once up on the mountain, the skiing is good, fairly testing and in sunny weather. L finds it even more so, as she seems to have picked up a touch of flu from somewhere.

Finding the hotel in Engleberg is also testing. It’s well signposted, so directions are not a problem. It’s just the long steep, narrow track that we have to follow out of Engleberg to find it. The hotel is very nice. It even serves the Swiss equivalent of Lemsip in the bar to those feeling a bit under the weather and for who even the most expensive of Swiss wines tastes like washing up water. Which saves us some money I suppose. L can put it to what she terms 'potato-free ski wear' for next year, a more flattering ski suit I think she means.

The weather forecast is looking horrible for the rest of the week but we get away with it the next day and it stays fine for most of the day although some of the higher runs are closed after overnight snow.

We move on the next day, heading to Lauterbrunnen which is in a beautiful location wedged between rock faces in the Jungfrau valley. The hotel is in an excellent position too within spitting distance of both the mountain railway up to Wengen and the cable car up to Murren.

It’s drizzling with rain and by now we’re both dripping with germs, so we take a day off skiing and join the Japanese tourists in taking the train up the mountain.

Our joint health and the weather stay unsettled but we manage to ski each day. It either snows or rains depending on the altitude, mostly the former. One day we ski up near Murren, although the top where the Schilthorn restaurant, made famous by James Bond, remains stubbornly shut. 

The other two days we ski at Wengen, skiing one day down to Grindelwald, although that involves a bit of a walking due to the thin snow cover.

Then it's time to take our germs home with us. Swiss Air aren’t quite as easy going as regards check in on the way back, the car is waiting for us with a flat tyre and the car park disagrees about the registration number of our car, so won’t let us out but none of this spoils things too much. Nor does the match commentary on Derby’s 2-2 draw with Watford that accompanies our trip home.

(Friday 3rd April) 

The Smallest Shower Known To Man

L takes the dogs for their walk as usual in an attempt to make it seems like a normal day. Although they may have smelt a rat as they get a longer walk than what they are accustomed to. I load the car up whilst they’re gone.

We all hop in and then a few miles down the road the dogs are dispatched to kennels, where we have to queue (at a safe distance) as lots of dogs seem to be being dumped today. They go like lambs, sort of. MD does ‘quiver’ a bit, whether this is terror or excitement I’m not sure.

We drive down to Luton Airport, which is a surprisingly traffic free journey. We park in the on-site car park, which has again turned out to be cheaper with a last minute booking than the supposedly cheaper off-site parking.

We are on an Easyjet flight for the first time in a long long time. Last time we queued forever and getting on board was a real free for all. Now they seem to have the best seat booking system of the lot and you check in when you book, not the day before you fly. Still don’t understand why it costs a fiver thought.

In fact there’s nothing cheap about the overall price. It would have been cheaper to fly Swissair from Heathrow but Luton is in theory easier. We’re had to pay £30 to put a bag in the hold and £60 to take our skis. The first bit really grates when everyone else takes a suitcase on board for free. Meaning if you did want to put your coat in the locker above your seat you’d be out of luck because they’d be a couple of Samsonites in there already.

You don’t get any snacks on board of course, not that they’re necessary but it doesn’t seem to make the flight any cheaper.

Once in Geneva we head to the car hire desk at Budget. I groan when they offer me a free upgrade. I resist the urge to tell them they mean a downgrade. My requested Astra/Golf size vehicle has morphed into an Opel Mokka. This turns out to be a people carrier thing that has space for a five a side team but only if they bring one bag between them. As well as the really tiny boot, it handles like a brick with a wheel at each corner on the mountain roads.

After negotiating Geneva rush hour, the Swiss-French border (such a thing still exists) and a contra flow (they exist aboard too) we arrive in the village of Les Carroz. The hotel Les Airelles looks great, the room is great, the food is great, the food is expensive and we have the smallest shower known to man.

Look forward to the skiing tomorrow.

(Friday 11^th April)