Cruising the world

Saturday After a sleepless night came an early start, out to Heathrow to head for Geneva, Switzerland with friends, Tony and Caroline. We had tried to check in on line the previous night, when James realised I was booked under Julie Atkinson-an error somewhere along the line, which meant I needed to pay a 30 pound fee to change my name back to Julie Dunlop-to match my passport details….although it took three calls to correct, and we left the house assured by the time we got to the airport my details would be changed (despite giving them over 12 hours warning!). Thankfully it had been changed by the time we reached the airport! We arrived and waited Charlotte (Caroline’s friend) to arrive from Denmark, and then we took our transfer to Chatel, France. Chatel is based within the Port du Soleil ski region on the French Alps, boarding Switzerland. We checked into our apartment, booked a lesson for myself and Charlotte (who was skiing) and headed to the ski hire shop, which was really packed with people (it was the last week of French School holidays), and hired our boards and boots. We headed to a local restaurant for dinner, with the boys enjoying a traditional raclette. A nice meal, a few drinks and an early night had by all. Sunday We all made it to the first ski field for the trip –Pre la Joux by 9am after a good tip off that the French don’t go for early starts typically. This was largely true, as we headed up a run (which turned out to be red when we thought it was green) after some poor advice as to where we needed to head to for our booked lessons. With everybody else making their way down the mountain, I walked my way down after realising this wasn’t a confidence-building slope for a beginner!!! By the time we made our way back to where we actually needed to be, a little grumpy, we all stopped for a hot drink, before Charlotte headed for her lesson, I headed for the green slope nearby and James, Caroline and Tony headed up some more challenging slopes. My snowboarding lesson early afternoon went very well, with Richard giving me lots of pointers about where my weight should be on the board and how to relax on the board! After two hours, I was linking turns down the mountain, showing off to James and Tony watching at the bottom. Sore and tired we headed home, ordered some takeaways and had an early night. Monday We headed to Super Chatel today, to try out some new slopes. I left the gang at the learners slope to practice my turns while they headed further up the mountain, meeting at lunch. Unfortunately, after several great runs, I wiped out after a kid cut in front of me on skis, using my tailbone and head to stop myself. Not great. I composed myself and hobbled off to the restaurant to meet everyone for lunch. I headed home with Caroline after lunch, feeling too sore to continue. .......Tony and I continued on and started to tackle some more difficult slopes and snowboarded down a few black runs (one being right beside a reasonable sized avalanche). The snow was so the best I have ever boarded on in my life by far........ Tuesday The girls decided to have a day off the slopes, which was a good thing after feeling really sore, and indulged by having a back and leg massage followed by some shopping around the town. Chatel was filled with many cheeses, chocolate and salami style meat stores, so we were very happy people! We also managed to book in some ‘mushing’ for Thursday-which is husky dog sledging. .......Tony and I hit the mountain earlier for a big day without the ladies. We headed straight for the top of Pre La Joux and boarded down to the other side of the mountain to another ski field called Avoriaz. We found a terrain park for snow boarders which was wicked and as my confidence grew of the past 2 days I started to hit some rails. After 2hrs of terrain park we headed toward an area where we ducked under the avalanche warning rope for some steep and snowy boarding. Tony was a little scared but I told him to grow a pair and harden up. By the end of the day I was a broken man, we were both absolutely knackered!....... Wednesday Unfortunately I could not bring myself to head for the slopes today, with my tail bone still quite painful, so I left the group at breakfast and had another relaxing day in the chalet. The weather was quite foggy initially and it did snow quite heavily that afternoon on the slopes, with fairly poor visibility. ......Hit Avoriaz again on Wednesday but I was quite sore. It started snowing quite heavily and I called it quits at 1430 and left the others to it. I set of by myself back toward Pre La Joux for the bus trip back to Chatel to meet up with Julie....... Thursday Today the girls left the boys to snow board while we caught a bus to where the Alaskan husky dog sledging was. We arrived to see the dogs being brought out and tied up to three sleds (two of which we had between three of us). It was quite unnerving at present, as in a pack environment, these dogs were all howling at each other, and were very excitable. Interestingly the first dog tied to the sled also didn’t settle until another dog joined beside him, and on my sled, beside myself and the ‘musher’ there was four dogs in total. Caroline and Charlotte went on the adjacent sled. It was really quite easy to do in terms of ‘driving the sled’, as these dogs knew the track well, so all we had to do (besides stand on the legs of the sled) was to lean around the corners, and the brake system was operated by foot, with a metal bar being gently wedged into the snow. I must admit, we did a bit of off roading with my dogs, as “Dance” kept nipping at his mate beside him, which kept steering us off course! Turns out Dance was sent back to his kennel afterwards-poor Dance! All in all it was such a cool experience, which I will never forget (hence the many photos taken of these lovely dogs!). I really hope to get a husky dog one day; maybe we could build a cart with wheels too! The girls headed to the local restaurant and treated ourselves to a huge lunch before heading back to Chatel. ........Tony and I headed for Pre La Joux again with the attention of making our way back to Chatel snowboarding through about 6 different ski fields. The weather was dodgy as but as soon as we got above the cloud it was brilliant. We went over to Morzine ski field first for a few runs, then a few runs at Avoriaz, then a very rough ride down to Les Crosets on a steep black run which was moguled up hard. After lunch the weather really turned to crap we could hardly see 3 meters in front of us. We really struggled trying to find our way to place called Morgins and got quite lost at Champoussin ski field trying to find our way to Super Chatel. We had to call it quits and go back the way we came. We were really struggling as we needed a lot of speed to get through some areas but we couldn’t see what was coming up in front of us making the journey home difficult............. We all meet up for dinner at a local crepery, which we didn’t realise until we arrived that they had held the store open for us, due to our earlier booking-VIPs! (Ok, well actually this was one of the many miscommunications that occurred due to trying to speak French!) We all had savoury crepes, followed by sweet filling crepes, although the boys still felt a little hungry after a hard day on the slopes! Friday Well the time had come for me to really see if I could manage a day snow boarding with an achy tail bone, so James and I got ready and headed for the learners slope to be joined later by the others. With a jersey wrapped around my waist (‘aka a tail bone protector’) I soon discovered I was too chicken to fall and couldn’t relax on the board-I would have to go into retirement early! I left the others to have one last day on the slopes and I headed back to Chatel to ‘be like the French’ and collect my morning baguette and I did a tour of Chatel by train too. ...........On the last day I was going to impress everyone with my talent and ski. I couldn’t bring myself to do it because we had fresh snow that night and a mint day (cold though). I spent couple of hours with Tony around Avoriaz. We hit one mean Black run which gave me the shits, felt like it was straight up and down and it was a bit icy. Tony couldn’t keep up the pace with me today and ended up heading home, so I spent the rest of the day with Charlotte and took her to some good runs that Tony and I had found previously. Quite a cool day got a lot of movie footage on camera including a spill I had in the terrain park off a rail due to some little clown falling of in front of me......... Saturday We headed to Chatel town to buy a few last minute items (macaroons, mille feuille etc!) before our transfer took us back to Geneva. We had a few hours to spend in Geneva, so we had a nice leisurely lunch followed by a wander of the main streets before heading to the airport. who was skiing)