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Big Mountain Blog Second Season
Friday 19th May
Well , what an eventful final week , Jock , Ingrid and I were ready to do our last gig in Victors on the wednesday , unfortunately some head dude from Langley was doing an inspection so we could not play. I had a wee think and wandered accross the road to Le petit Danois and offered the manager a free performance , obviously he thought this would be good.
Ingrid had to go and work at Genevieve but Jock and I played a 2 hour set , the manager was so pleased he asked us if we could do their closing BBQ the next day. We played (Ingrid too obviously) and it all went very well , the owner was there and he suggested we might be able to get some apres gigs there next season so fingers crossed that’s a good start for next year.
We finished our last week of working at Genevieve and Jenny took us back to Triffolet for a farewell meal , we could not finish off with a beer at the Rosie as they had closed for the season , a quick bus ride delivered us to XV instead.
We packed up the appartment and loaded the van on the monday morning and said farewell to Val d’Isere for a little while and headed North to start our journey home , on the advice of Will the weather man from Radio Val we had decided to overnight in a place called Beaune in the heart of the Burgandy region. We arrived late afternoon and booked into an Ibis hotel and then went to discover the town centre. Lots of very nice bars a restaurants to choose from , we picked one and had a fantastic meal with some great wine.
Next morning we went shopping and loaded up with some local wines and a load of cheesy cones (those who know , know what I mean) and headed for Calais , we got straight on a train and once back in England headed up the M1 as far as Loughboro’ where we stayed at a hotel we had stayed at a few years ago when we were down for the MotoGP @ Donington Park , we had a great meal at a small pub next door and could not believe how cheap it all was compared to Val.
Wednesday saw us on the last leg back to Aberdeen , we arrived here late afternoon and Sparky acted as if we had just gone away the previous day (just like last year) he basically meowed at us suggesting we should give him some food.
Ingrid is busy with massage work and back part time at the hospital , I am hoping a job will come up for me very soon but meanwhile busy doing jobs around the house and the garden.
All in it was another great season , lots of snow , lots of skiing , a few more steady gigs would have been nice but hopefully things will be better next year.
Andy
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Saturday 18th April
Well , that’s the season nearly over , we have just one more week to go now. There are 6 guests at Chalet Genevieve next week so we will be back on chalet girl duty. There were no guests this week so we took Jenny (our boss) out for sunday lunch at Triffolet , a long lazy meal was followed by a short ski down to the Rosie Blanche for a beer in the sun.
We have had changeble weather for the last week or so , it has been very warm and sunny so the snow in town has been dissapearing fast , we have also had rain which has washed away even more snow , then in the last few days it turned a bit colder and we got some snow , it’s sunny again today so who knows what we will get next.
Our jemby player Jerome finished his contract as a pisteur this week so he played his last gig with us in Victors on Wednesday, we have one more gig there this week and then the bar closes for the season on Saturday , hopefully the stuff we have done there this season will lead to more work there next year , fingers crosssed.
We had our first ever house guests in our appartment back on the 8th , Graham and Aileen our pals from Aberdeen who we visited in Pila popped in to see us on their way home. Luckily on the day they arrived we were doing a gig at the Alexandra bar in the evening so they along with Marion and Iain who were here for a weeks holiday were a ready made rent -a- crowd for us. it was a bit like a metro night out right here in val d’isere.
we were very lucky with the weather during Graham and Aileen’s visit , full blue skies and a big sun meant we could have a very nice al fresco lunch over in Tignes , we finished the day off in the traditional way with a beer on the terrace at The Rosie
It was sad to wave G&A off the next day but they had to get back to Aberdeen so they can plan their next adventure , no more 9-5 for them we think.
We have booked the tunnel for our journey home , we leave here on the 28th and should be back in Aberdeen on the 29th , there should be one more blog after this one to wrap up the season , till then , a beintot.
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Saturday 28th March
My first Saturday in 3 months without a transfer to do so I thought I would use it profitably and do some blogging. The Crystal numbers are down this week so not enough clients for me to have to man a bus. I have to confess I didn’t miss getting up at 3am today.
We’ve had a very busy week indeed. I did do a transfer last Saturday so Andy was on dinner duty again. Sunday is Jenny’s transfer day so we were busy doing extra cleaning and bed changing. She is full this week with 11 guests which makes things quite busy. I did dinner on Sunday night (we are still both working mornings) then on Monday night we were at Victor’s again for another gig. Fortunately another friend is helping Jenny out if we can’t make it. Straight after our gig we set off for Pila in Italy to visit Graham and Aileen who are doing a season for Crystal there. We had a good journey and arrived at 10.30pm. It was absolutely great to see them, have a good catch up and hear all about their season. We were very lucky as it snowed on Monday night so on Tuesday we had some fresh powder to play in.
We pretty much had the slopes to ourselves so we had a most superb day of skiing. It was great to see how much Graham and Aileen’s skiing has improved since being out here. Out for some pizza at night and then we played a gig in their local bar. Their was a distinct Italian/Scottish theme going on and the really good evening was topped by the locals singing the Italian national anthem which was reciprocated by Flower of Scotland.
It really was a fantastic night, even though it did go on a bit - I think we were all very glad to see our beds at 3am! Graham and I were to run the next morning but a bout of man-flu put paid to that and I was easily persuaded to spend another hour in bed. We had another great day of skiing although the visibility deteriorated and it became quite cold. Pila is a great wee resort and we were impressed with our first day of Italian skiing. Wednesday night we visited another restaurant and had another lovely meal to finish off our mini-break nicely. Thanks to Graham and Aileen for their wonderful hospitality.
We had to leave very early the next morning as Andy had picked up some transfer work so we had to return to Val via Geneva. The journey went very well and we were home by 1pm. Time for a quick lunch then we had to prepare for a gig in La Foret. We had our new band members along with us and it was a great gig. Afterwards we all went to Victor’s for dinner - this has turned into a very sociable week! Working at Jenny’s yesterday and today - the weather has turned pretty rubbish so we haven’t skied. It has been very mild today and was even raining at one point which is a bit depressing in a ski resort I have to say.
Tomorrow is transfer day again so it will be all go, and on Monday we play again at Victor’s. We have heard the forecast for the week is not so good - as long as it all turns to snow then it won’t be so bad. But we need the sun back as our tans are fading! However, if the weather fails us the sales started today so a bit of retail therapy might just help!
ingrid.
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Friday 20th March
Apologies for the lack of a blog - it’s taken us a whole week to recover from the event of the Irish visit. However, we are back on track now and as it’s FAR too cold to go skiing today I thought I would do a wee catch up. (we’ve had glorious weather afor a whole week but today it’s -2 so a bit nippy again).
We’ve had a very busy couple of weeks. The Irish (and friends - Phil, Graham, Mark and Liam you are all now classed together) all arrived on the 7th. I was at Geneva and was totally astounded (pleasantly so I must add) to discover none other than Mark Masson on my bus! Not only that he was bearing gifts of creme eggs and fugdges which made him doubley welcome. He was meeting his friend Liam in resort, so we all met up and introduced everyone over a couple of beers in 15 once we all arrived. Everyone got on like a house on fire and I think I can safely say they all had a fantastic holiday - skiing, drinking (copiously), not wearing enough sun cream (Mark), causing a riot in their chalet, taking us out for lunch, supporting us at our first gig in Victor’s and getting up to do a song (Ivor), mastering (?!) the off-piste (Mark did complain like a girl though), managing entertainment on the day when the lifts didn’t open due to bad weather, back-country skiing with the pisteurs (Phil), getting rescued on an unpisted run (Lesley), having to leave the table before dinner was served in the restaurant on the chalet day off (Ian), impressing everyone with snowboarding skills (Liam) , leaving stuff behind by mistake at the end of the holiday (Kerry). It was very sad when the week came to a close and we all said goodbye, but hopefully it’s only au reviour until the next time. This was lunch at the Trifollet on the last day .........
I was working all week doing massage, and as mentioned we did a gig in Victor’s. We had a couple of friends (the aforementioned pisteurs), Jock on guitar and Jerome on bongos to help us out and it all went very well. We played again this past Wednesday and will be there next Monday. We have now picked up some more work though - one of our friends runs her own private chalet (Jenny and her dog Poppy who I went skinning with), her chalet girl had to go home early so we are now working as chalet girl/boy!! We are both working in the morning then one of us does dinner too. It’s great working with Jenny as we all get on very well, although I’m not sure that Andy is all that keen on cleaning bathrooms!!!
We had an enormous dump of snow last week and it was great fun to ski in, if a little deep ....
I seemed to spend most of the time on my head, or thereabouts .....
So the Irish did very well to cope with it. Even though taking them through the trees was perhaps a step too far! After some bad days the sun finally returned on Thursday and we’ve had glorious weather ever since, almost too hot in fact. It’s now at the point in the season where after lunchtime the lower runs are getting a bit slushy but since I like big splashy moguls it’s my favourite time of year.
We’re going to have a mini-break next week as we are heading over to Pila on Monday to visit Graham and Aileen for a couple of days. It’ll be great to catch up with them and find out how their season has been and also ski with them.
I’m massaging tonight so Andy is on dinner duty - he’s not minding so much tonight because it’s duck for dinner which is one of his favourites - so there are plusses to being a chalet boy after all!
ingrid.
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Friday 6th March
Did I ever tell you the one about the snowboarder who stopped to take a pee at the entrance to Sachette ? no ? well , he’d just done the ice traverse from the top of the Aguille Percee chair , then took off his board and walked up the little bit to the ridge where you get in , he decided before whooshing off into the off piste paradise he would take a leak. Halfway through , a small gust of wind caught his snowboard , flipped it onto it’s base and off it went , whizzing down hill , riderless , like the true free spirit that a snowboard is , it leapt across the piste , luckiliy missing everyone , then went over a bit of a drop off and that’s the last we saw of it...not that we’d seen that much of it through the tears of laughter , well , Ingrid , Darren and I were laughing , Gary ,who’s 3 day old £700 snowboard it was wasn’t doing too much laughing , funny that eh ?
Lucky for Gary , the gallant skier (me) went off and found it for him , I got a few funny looks getting back on the chairlift with skis on and a snowboard tucked under my arm but I resisted the temptation to sell it and delivered it back to it’s very embarrassed owner , later that day the beers were definitely on Gary , cheers mate.
We had a great week of adventures with Darren and Gary , most of the off piste was pretty skied out but we still found some good turns and some fantastic scenery , here’s a few wee samples.
On Friday we played at Signal again , it was a fantastic day and very hot , hopefully we will get good weather and play there again soon
The weather changed again this week and we have been back to wintery conditions , it was welcome though as the pistes were getting very worn and icy. We have had 2 days of constant snow and I would guess at between 75 and 100cm has fallen , I had a wee play in the trees at Le Fornet today and it was awesome.The forecast is for better weather tomorrow , good thing as it’s the return of the Irish , it wouldn’t do for Kerry to have to sit outside the restaurant and get snow in her champagne.
Hopefully we will survive the next seven days and we’ll have some good tales to tell , I can almost feel the hangover coming on already , c’est la vie.
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Wednesday 25th February
Thank goodness the World Championships are finally over! I think the common consensus was that a week would have been long enough. By the end of 2 weeks everyone was fed up fighting their way through spectators and trying to get on with normal living. I believe the coverage on TV was good - and I have to confess we watched a few races ourselves from the comfort of our apartment.
We’ve had an up and down couple of weeks. We hit rock bottom last week with the cancellation of the only gig we had left - once again this was due to budget cuts. It was very frustrating for us as we were pulling a crowd at the V-Spot but they decided to cancel all live music and go with a DJ who was playing an apres and a night slot for a quarter of what we were being paid and we just couldn’t compete with that. But finally today a bit of good news. We played our first gig up at Le Signal restaurant which went very well (until the spit in my saxophone froze and we had to stop playing) and it looks like we’ll be up there a couple of days (or more, weather permitting) each week.
It was a beautiful day but after 2pm the wind got up slightly and it just became too cold. Hopefully we’ll get some warmer weather in the next few weeks with no frozen spit!
Other good news is that after the very poor weather for the championships, then some extreme cold, we’ve had some good weather skiing days. And of course we’ve now had lots more time to pack in as much skiing as we can. I finally did my first hike with skiis attached to rucksack and it was great. We’ve covered a lot more off-piste and I’ve managed to do most of it without pooping my pants which is always a plus.
We’ve had good company this week with Gary and Darren (even though they are boarders) and I think we’re getting much better at guiding. Well, Andy is anyway. I’m always good for suggesting the best hot choc stops.
I’ve picked up some massage work which is good, and I’ve still got my Saturday transfer job to keep me busy. We had a day out to Grenoble last week when it was bad weather. It was nice to get away for the day and have a complete change. I’m still managing to get to the gym 3 or 4 days per week and I’ve finally found a running buddy for my Sunday morning outiside long run. Although we both made a big mistake by still running up to Le Fornet the morning it was -20. I don’t think I’ve ever been so cold. I got back into bed with Andy on my return for a warm-up, but he wasn’t even slightly impressed and refused all warming duties!!
Suddenly now that we are more than half way through the season time seems to have speeded up and it feels like it won’t be long until we are home. Time to look for last minute deals if you want to come out and visit, and we’ve heard that there are a few to be had!
A bientot,
ingrid.
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Monday 9th February
Well , that’s the first week of the world championships over , the big race of the week was the mens downhill which was held on saturday and you probably all saw on ski sunday , a friend of ours works in the Kandahar Hotel where the Canadian team are staying and as one of the team was leaving the hotel in the morning she wished him good luck and gave him a big hug , you’ve guessed it , he won , Mila reckons it’s all down to her hug , he must agree as she was showered with gifts , a team jacket and T-shirt among them.
Here is an action shot from saturday’s race.
There was quite a crowd at the finish line
We had another busy friday gig in V-spot so that’s all good news , also now we are into February we should be playing on the Terrace at Signal soon , all we need is a sunny day.
Ingrid has had a busy week for trying new stuff , we had 25cm of fresh snow on saturday night so Sunday morning saw us up to Le Fornet for some fun in the trees.
As you can see , Ingrid also has a new hat complete with furry bobble , very posh.
Another first for Ingrid today was Ski Touring , she rented skis with touring bindings and skins and she and our pal Jenny “skinned up” from the cable car at Le Fornet to Signal , poppy (Jenny’s dog) went along for the walk too
Skiing down from SIgnal afterwards was a hoot , poppy may look like a Labrador but when it come to chasing Jenny down the piste she is half greyhound , slower skiers got quite a shock as she whizzed past them trying to catch mum.
The forecast for the next couple of days is wind and snow , lets hope we get more snow than wind and some nice deep powder to play in , later dudes and dudettes.
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Sunday 1st February
Pinch, punch 1st of the month ..... I can’t belive we’re now into February. All of a sudden time seems to be speeding up. Hopefully that means we’ll soon be into better weather, although the forecast for this week isn’t brilliant with 100km/h winds due tomorrow.
Andy had some exciting pictures and stories for the last blog but my news is a bit dull compared to his. After doing the transfer day from hell a week ago (I started at 4.45am and finished at 11.45pm) I decided enough was enough and one of my jobs had to go. In the end it made sense to finish at the restaurant to get some skiing time back, so I had my last day on Friday. In restrospect I really enjoyed it and have made some good friends whilst managing to improve my french too. So no more Le Signal uniform .........
...... but maybe that’s not a bad thing! One of the plus points from doing the job is that we’ve now got a fantastic guest singer who has started coming to our gigs. Claire works as a waitress in the posh upstairs restaurant at Le Signal but also sings solo with a choir, so she’s been round to the apartment a couple of times to practice with Andy, and got up to sing a couple of songs last Friday at V-Spot to a lot of applause.
We’ve had a very good piece of news in that we start (hopefully Wednesday, weather permitting) up at the Folie Douce playing for a couple of hours at lunchtime. This is a really good break for us because it has to be one of the coolest places to perform in the Alpes. We will probably be doing one lunchtime there, then one apres at Cafe Face which is part of the same group. For those of you with internet access at work check out www.valdinet.com and have a look at the Party on the Piste webcam around Wednesday lunchtime and hopefully you’ll spot us.
Not so good news was my dad having to have an operation last week. He’s at home now recovering but it makes for a worrying time again.
The World Championships start tomorrow for 2 weeks and there has been a huge flurry of preparation with the town being quite transformed. Nobody seems to know if it’s going to be a good or bad 2 weeks for businesses. The slopes were very quiet today, and we’ve heard there are a number of chalets empty and ski schools quiet. However there are roughly 220,000 spectators expected so maybe they will all be arriving tomorrow morning! We are going to opening ceremony tomorrow night which promises to be quite a spectacle (although after the Beijing olympics it might be a bit pealey walley)(ie. pale, for anyone not Scots!).
Happy February,
ingrid.
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Sunday 25th January 2009
Fair fa your honest sonsie face , great chieftain o’ the puddin race ........ and all that , happy Burns Night to one and all, hope you are tucking into neeps and tatties and all the stuff tonight.
Well , it’s been a busy couple of weeks , a couple of pals from Glasgow and one from Manchester have been out , they are all serious off piste junkies and have been showing me the delights of things like “pisteurs couloir” , “moniteurs couloir” and the slightly less glamourously named “mickeys ears” (so called’cos there is a radio mast nearby that looks a bit like mickey mouses ears) Here are a couple of views up and down the kind of thing we were skiing
Things got very , very posh last weekend here in Val , the new night club sponsored a Polo match , yes , guys on horses with big sticks galloping around on the snow hitting a big orange ball. There was free food and drinks provided for the thousand or so spectators that turned up to watch , I’ve never seen live Polo before and it all looked a bit dangerous to me , very exciting to watch though.
We played our first gig in the new V-spot bar last friday ,it almost didn’t happen as Ingrid got stuck in the fornet cable car coming down from signal , the wind was blowing the snow directly into the bottom station and it was affecting the rope winding , the cable car made 4 attempts before it successfully got to the bottom. It was very busy in the bar and all went well so we have been asked to play regular fridays there from now on.
There was another big dump of snow here this weekend , we had about a metre over two days and this put the mountain at an avalanche risk of 5/5 , lots of roads were closed to pedestrians and most of the chairlifts did not run , it should be great conditions up the mountain one the piste security people finish blowing things up and making everywhere safe , good news for anyone coming on holiday this week.
Just in case anyone thought they were seeing things back in Aberdeen a week or so ago , no , you are not ready for cornhill , it was Ingrid you saw out running , she popped home for a few days to see her folks as her dad had been unwell , it was a good excuse to bring lots of creme eggs and fudge bars back too.
That’s all for now , Ingrid will be back blogging very soon , au revoir mon braves !!
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Sunday 4 January 2009
Happy New Year to all our readers !! Well , that was quite a week , on friday we said goodbye to our Irish pals Ian and Lesley , but they will be back in March teamed up with the Coopers in the form of Ivor and Kerry , Val won’t know what has hit it.
Last Friday I did a fill in gig over at Crowded House with a band called The Mountee , their bass player had to go back to the UK for a few days , it was the staff christmas night out there so it was a bit of a riot , a good time was had by all though. Ingrid had another very early transfer to Geneva on saturday so we were a bit like ships passing in the night when I got home.
Sunday we had our double header , we played to a very “crowded” Crowded House from 5 ‘till 7 then had a mad hour of putting the gear back in the van and whooshing to Le Brasero and setting everything back up again for our 8-10 gig , that also went very well and the owners very kindly gave us our dinner after we had played. This has all worked out pretty well though as Le Brasero have asked us to play there on the alternate sunday to our Crowded House gig so that’s us playing every sunday now.
Other big news of the week is I got to do the famous Torchlit Descent of the Face de Bellevarde on New Years Day , our pal Uffe invited me along , I was a bit worried as I didn’t have a clue what it would be like. Basically all the instructors (and invited guests) meet at the Olympic gondola at 5:30 and ride up to the top station , you then ski down to the Bellevarde restaurant (in the dark) and have a beer and collect your torch , this is a 2 foot long magnesium flare. After this it starts getting trickier , first problem is when you get outside you have to find your skis amongst the other 300 or so pairs (in the dark) then get them on , you then ski down a completely un-pisted black run to the ledge in the middle (people who know the Face will know where I mean) again in the dark. Everybody lines up 3 or so deep on the ledge and quite a way back up and waits to be told to light the flares , the view down over a very lit up Val with fireworks going off is quite spectacular and something you never normally get to see. Then comes the signal to light up , the lead guy drops over the egde and everybody else follows his line down , I thought the bottom part would be pisted but oh no.....you traverse the hill between the moguls and then look for a good place to turn at the end ,the torches are quite bright but cast a lot of shadows so the huge bumps look even bigger.
That’s me in the middle..........anyway , I made it to the bottom in one piece and with a big grin on my face.
Huge thanks to Uffe for inviting me along , I hope I get to do it again sometime.
Ingrid has had a busy week working at Signal , lots more people were in town last week and the mountain restaurants were much busier , lets hope that is the season finally picking up steam. I had some good skiing with some folks over from Aberdeen in the shape of Mike and Lindsey and James “pizzaman” Cunningham and Steve “the Lightsman” , hope you all had a good trip back home , see you in March.
We are playing Le Brasero in Tignes tonight so lets hope it’s busy , we’ll let you know in the next blog instalment , ‘till then a-beintot , Andy
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Friday 26 December
Merry Christmas! After nearly a week of glorious sun we ended up having a very very white christmas in the form of blizzard conditions. It cleared up a bit in the evening - this is down-town Val d’Isere on Christmas Day....
but today there is snow again and extremely high winds (100km/h) so it just might have to be a duvet day (I think we’re allowed one now and again).
We’ve had a bit of a mixed week news-wise with good, bad and sad. Bad news was that we didn’t get the gig at cafe face we were hoping for which was a real disappointment. Good news was me getting another job working at Le Signal restaurant up at Le Fornet where I’ll be working every day from 12pm for a couple of hours clearing tables. I think it was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the lack of gigs as we’ve now had 7 gigs knocked back, but it’s been a bit like buses coming along all at once and now that I have 4 jobs have we not picked up some more gigs after all?! This Sunday we’re playing from 5pm to 7pm then somewhere else from 8pm to 10pm - we’ll be having an interesting hour between 7pm and 8pm taking down then setting up again! Good news about working at Le Signal is I am the only Brit so I’m really having to work hard at my french and also once the weather gets better we may be playing on their terrace in the afternoons (once I’ve finished clearing lunch tables of course!).
Very sad news was having to have our old lady cat, Felix, put to sleep on Tuesday morning. We had left her with our friends Pauline and Gary where she had completely settled in was being absolutely spoilt rotten but unfortunately she had complete kidney failure so there was only one course of action. It was very hard being out here when it happened, even though we knew this was a possibilty as she had reached the grand old age of 16.
In other cat news Sparky-Bad-Boy is doing very well and has been spotted across the other side of Burns Road in Angie and John’s house sneaking in through their cat flap to pinch food. For those of you who know Sparky he’s not the smallest of cats to go sneaking, but was apparently caught commando-crawling across their kitchen floor!
We also had a lovely Christmas day with a wee ski in the morning, a couple of hours work for me then a splendid Christmas dinner at our friend Jenny’s. We’ve had a good week with our Irish friends Ian and Lesley, due to the great weather we got some lovely days skiing with them.
I did my first transfer last Saturday and went to Geneva - it was a day of chaos and mayhem, so no change there. Andy had a really tough day too as he hiked up to Mickey’s Ears and did some off-piste skiing. Life is hard, huh?!
The resort has been relatively quiet for Christmas. Although there are people here the shops and bars have not been very busy which, of course, is having a knock-on effect on us getting gigs. Everyone is hoping that next week will be busier and things pick up a bit. The snow conditions will be helping as it’s pretty much perfect (exepct today of course!) so now is the time to look for a last minute bargain if you want to come out on holiday.
The next report will definitely be from Andy or there’s going to be some really big trouble .... ladies and gentlemen place your bets ......
ingrid
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Monday 15 December
The theme of today’s blog must be the snow - oh my goodness have we had snow. This was the scene from our window this morning .....
The Val d’Isere weather report reckoned on 105cm falling last night and we could well believe it. The main road down the valley from the resort was blocked, people with windows facing the mountains were warned to close all shutters in case of avalanches, no pedestrians were allowed on many of the roads (which were also blocked to cars) and absolutely no lifts were open at all the whole day. There were many security warnings in place and these remain so for the next 24 hours, with an avalanche warning of 5/5 which is the maximum - it’s absolutely the most snow that either of us have ever seen here. However, I have to say I stupidly went to the gym at 7.30am, no mean feat after battling out of the apartment building door .......
However, it hasn’t been all doom and gloom and this was the view that greeted us on Saturday morning once we’d gone up through the cloud. This was the view from the top of Toviere ....
There were 3 days of World Cup racing being held here with the likes of Bode Miller and other well known race stars taking part. It may have been on Ski Sunday yesterday, we haven’t heard if it’s been on or not. The resort was very busy (read for that “chaotic” as all the road priorities were changed, only the French can completely change the one way system to the other way round without any warning whatsover) but due to the rather inclement weather yesterday’s events were cancelled.
In other news: we played our first gig in Crowded House in Tignes last night and that went very well. We’re still waiting for confirmation on Val d’Isere gigs - unfortunately the credit crunch is ever reaching and the effects are definitely being felt up here as we’ve lost our Tuesday La Foret gig due to budget cuts. And today we heard a rumour that the pound is only worth 90p against the euro..... surely not?!?
I do my first transfer this Saturday which will be a busy one with all the Christmas guests. We’ve got half of The Irish coming out (the full complement will be out force in March) so no doubt they’ll keep us entertained for a week (or we’ll be busy entertaining them, the craic will be good for sure) and we’ve been invited out for Christmas dinner to one of our friends - she’s a professional chalet host so it promises to be good.
It’s definitely Andy’s turn for the next update - this WILL be happening soon :-)
ingrid
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Friday 5 December
Yes, well, so much for keeping a weekly update. Honestly, we’ve been busy! (mental note to self: must try harder).
So, what have we been up to for the past however many days? Well, we got ourselves organised in the apartment which took a bit of time as we still had all of Alex’s gear in it (he rented it last summer) and since there had been work carried out at the end of last season it needed a bit of cleaning. We went shopping to Bourg, got credit on the french phone, organised our lift passes, caught up with lots of friends who are back out again this season, and have basically been out and about getting work. We played our first gig last Tuesday in La Foret which is going to be a regular weekly event. We’re also going to be in Crowded House in Tignes every second Sunday, the Auberge St Hubert Bar on the main street in Val every Friday night, with another couple of possibilities in the offing. I’ve managed to get my Saturday transfer job back (deep joy - NOT!) and I’ll also be working for PhysioVal again. Oh, and I’ve joined the gym this year which will certainly beat running outside in -20. It’s a new experience for me running on a treadmill and is not without it’s own adventures!
And, of course, we’ve managed to get lots of skiing in as well. The lifts opened in Val on Saturday 29th November but we had a sneaky peak round at Tignes on the Thursday before. We had a marverllous day getting our ski legs back in with near perfect conditions and a distinct lack of people. We’ve been up every day since the lifts opened until today where we had an adventure going to Bourg shopping in the buckets of snow that have fallen since last night. We’ve had a few regular snowfalls (although we hear that Aberdeen is trying to rival Val d’Isere’s snow depth) but since last night there has been about 30cms in town and it’s still piling down. Allegedly there is about 60cms at the top of Grand Motte so I can guess where we’re heading tomorrow morning. The good news about all the cloud and snow is that it’s not as cold as it has been. We both seemed to struggle last week with the cold and the altitude but I think we’re both acclimatising. Last year the locals were saying it was the best start to a season in 15 years - there is so much snow this year that word on the street is that it’s the best start since 1963 which bodes well for the World Championships and World Cup which will be held here later this month and in February. Keep a look out on Ski Sunday!
Here’s a pic of Andy from last Monday on the way down to La Daille. Just a wee bit of snow then!
ingrid.
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and so the blog begins ...............
Monday 24th November
After escaping Aberdeen just before the snow arrived on Friday morning (you call that snow?!) we had a very good 3 day journey down to Val d’Isere. We called in by to visit Andy’s mum on Friday afternoon then drove on down to spend the night with our friend Sue in Leighton Buzzard. Thanks Sue for a most excellent evening and for sending us on our way with some great books. (Sue and Andy with Sue’s very shiny wallpaper)
We set off bright and early on Saturday morning and headed for Thurrock services where we picked up half of Mullit (Val d’Isere’s happening rock band). Alex and Mark had set off the previous weekend but unfortunately Al’s car had a terminal breakdown so they were a bit stuck for transport. So in stepped “The Transporter” (yes, this is going to be Andy’s nickname for the season) who reckoned we’d have loads of room in the new Ruby (turns out he was right) so off we set all loaded up to td the gunnells. We were lucky to get an earlier train than we had booked at Folkestone which meant we were able to drive all the way down to Reims for the night. We spent a great night at the Reims Ibis hotel, complete with beer, food and an open fire. We hit the road again early yesterday, finally arriving in Val about 3.30pm. We’d heard the weather was bad but the sun was shining when we drove up the mountain. The temperature was -9 which was a bit of a shock, but it seemed we arrived just in the nick of time as it soon started snowing and has only stopped today, I think we have about 2 feet. There is chaos in town and we were reminded that we live on Slippy Corner with carnage outside as we had our breakfast - vans getting stuck, cars sliding down backwards, people falling over - welcome back to Val d’Isere!!
ingrid.
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