Another retirement plan

Sam, Lucy and I were discussing retirement on holiday. I'm 59 this year, so it's getting closer and closer.


I do blow hot and cold about retiring. I enjoy my job and like working with people in the company. I'd miss that stimulation, amusement and companionship when I retired.


However, the job does require a lot of travelling (four hours a day) which means that, during the week, you have no time for anything but work and travel. Get in at 7.45pm, have some supper, perhaps have a chat or watch some TV and then it's bed at 9pm to be up for 5am.


Sam thought I might go part time and it's a good idea, but my job is office based and part-time working would mean that either I'd pay a chunk of money for a season ticket that I wasn't utilising 20 or 40 per cent of the time or that I'd pay high prices for individual tickets.


I told Sam about Oaks for England, my other ideas and a few random ones like artisan baking (I'm watching too much TV) and he came up with a suggestion which would keep me busy for three months.


The idea is to make cider from apples which are otherwise going to be wasted. It has a number of plus points:

• No cost for ingredients.
• A helpful lack of red tape on taxation.
• Appeal to campaigns against waste.
• This could be a garage (or shed) project.

So here's the plan: I find a source of apples, they are apples that people have surplus, that they don't want to pick or that have fallen on the ground and are bruised so unsuitable for eating - "cosmetically challenged" would be the phrase. I'd need quite a stack of these as you can make and sell up to 2,000 litres of cider without having to pay an excise duty, so collecting them would be very labour intensive.


Once I have the apples, I'd need to chop them, press them (I'd have to buy a cider press), ferment the juice in large plastic tubs, then syphon off into bottles. Sam thought that a nice touch would be to use various random bottles that I'd been able to collect during the year. These might range from old wine bottles to plastic water bottles. The cider would be priced by volume for a 50cl water bottle would be priced lower than a 70cl wine bottle; you could even sell 1-litre bottles if they were available.


To get maximum price for the product, you'd need to have some clever marketing. The campaign against waste and the bottle recycling scheme would be useful, then you'd need to retail the cider perhaps at a market or, better still, a farmers' market. We thought about calling it Recycled Cider, but that doesn't really work. Still have to come up with a decent name.


It's a work in progress!


Update: Tom has come up with a good suggestion for a name - Windfall Cider. This has the benefit of suggesting the recycling, no-waste element of the business and also implying an unexpected bonus for the consumer.


Tom says he went to Europe’s first dedicated cider bar last week.

It’s called the Cider Tap, opposite the Euston Tap (outside Euston station).

http://www.eustontap.com/pages.php?navid=9

He says it has loads of UK and Breton farm ciders straight from the barrel. 

On a completely different subject, there was a lucky escape for some feathered creatures in Thorney yesterday. Lucky birds no 1 were Arcardia's flock of chickens which, since his shed burned down and burned a hole on his fence/hedge, have been able to get out into the field and the field track. Holly and Gravel turned the corner yesterday and were presented with the mouthwatering sight of a dozen tasty chickens - I bet they thought they were in Springer Spaniel heaven. Luckily they were on short leads and Margaret was able to rein them in and the only damage was the loss of a couple of tail feathers. Then, walking up Toneham, both dogs passed a spot then suddenly turned around and charged back. There was a particularly stupid pheasant laying low in the grass. Holly was first to it and grabbed it in her jaws. She's not used to catching big birds and either wasn't holding it tightly enough or didn't like the feel of it in her mouth. In any event, she let it slip and it took to the air to make its escape, just evading a massive jump from Gravel who would have clamped his jaws around it like a great white shark.

Back to work ...

It was a pretty achey, miserable return to work after my holiday. My leg was still quite sore and I had to join the slow lane on the Underground (standing on the escalator and staying behind the fatties waddling along the passages like ducks). King's Cross station has been refurbished and the makeover is almost complete which means, for some reason, the usual entrance to the Tube was closed and, having walked down there, I had to walk all the way back and then to the north ticket hall.


It is staggering how slowly some people walk (and not just the fat ones or even the old ones). Even with a limp, I was passing people quite quickly. They move along like browsing cattle; it almost makes you feel as if you want to get behind the and give them a shove - come on, hurry up, there's lots of interesting things going on and you're missing them.


I was in Howden on Tuesday for a visit by Radio Times and had a pretty full day of meetings. It's always nice to see my old work colleagues and I'm made to feel really welcome. Vicky had baked a cake - orange and ginger - which was lovely and had also brought in some extra tea-bags. Makes me miss everyone up there. I heard later that Vicky had to go into hospital for a 24-hour ECG to monitor her heart rhythm. Apparently, she's been having some palpitations, which has been a little scary. I hope that it's nothing serious, she's a lovely girl and only just turned 30.


Max called as I was getting ready to leave to say that Inna was on a skiing holiday with her parents and he was at a bit of a loose end if I wanted to stay over, so I went to see him on Wednesday evening. We had a couple of pints in the Bedford and then went to the Italian restaurant just up Bedford Hill Road for pizza and a bottle of red. That place is a gold mine - on a Wednesday night it was really busy and they had to do some quick calculations to work out if they had a table for us.


Max is in good form. He has just been made head of year 8 for the next academic year, which is brilliant considering that he only started teaching in September, and he's also going to be acting head of department for geography when the current head goes on maternity leave in the summer. He's going to have a very busy year. The head teacher had sat down with him last week and said that they hoped he was going to stay at the school for a few years and make his career there. I think they must find it hard to attract and keep really high calibre people. Max is tall and strong, with a good presence. He's a natural leader, but also very enthusiastic about teaching and about his subject. He's starting a climbing club at the school and will take boys to a climbing wall at a nearby school (they're considering installing a climbing wall at his school) and he's also helped out with some cricket nets. Max's day starts pretty early. He doesn't like to bring work home, so he gets up at 5am and sets off for school at about 5.40. He normally walks the 2.5 miles and gets in around 6.15am. He has some breakfast at school and then does his lesson preparation, admin and marking. School starts earlier than we did, but finishes at 2.30pm and, after school, Max will have some supervision duties, parent liaison and marking. I think he's home around 5.30 to 6pm. On Friday, all the teachers go to the pub and get drunk!


On Friday, I made a list of all the things I need to do that day, I'd got a bit behind having been off the week before, and it ran to about 15 things. I was quite pleased to manage to cross 10 or so off by the end of the day.


The weekend was to have been spent helping Tom and Hannah to wallpaper their second bedroom. The walls had been painted and there was a crack in an interior wall that was looking a bit unsightly. Hannah is very nervous about cracks in the house; she's concerned that they're a sign of subsidence. I guess because I've lived in older houses, I have a complete tolerance of cracks and, anyway, these are superficial. The wall is an interior wall that had been put up when the house was converted into apartments. Nowadays, you'd put up a stud wall, but this appears to be block or brick and then plastered. The house was quite damp when they moved in. I don't think it was a problem of rising damp, just that the people in there before let the plumbing deteriorate, so there were leaks, also they never opened windows and dried washing inside. Since Tom and Hannah have been in those faults have been fixed and I think the place is warmer and drier than it's been for years. Consequently a few drying cracks have appeared. Tom filled those and we were going to paper the walls.


It's a while since I've done any papering and I thought we'd get it done in a day, so I also accepted an invitation from Sam to do a mother's day lunch for Margaret thinking I could do Saturday at Tom's and Sunday at Sam's. As it happened, the wallpapering took much longer than anticipated. It's a surprisingly big room and very high. The picture rail also meant that we had to paper above and below with a different type of paper above. T&H had chosen a light brown textured vinyl for the top, which looked a little like the light hessian papers that were all the rage back in the 1970s. It went on OK, but left a lot of air bubbles and creases almost immediately and then the paste showed through as damp patches. It looked pretty awful to be honest, but I knew it would dry differently and we stuck with it. True enough, next morning, it looked really nice, so that was a mighty relief.


The other paper was a Laura Ashley print - a very big pattern which meant there was a lot of waste unless you cut the sheet very carefully. At £37 per roll, you wanted as little waste as possible. The paper was good and heavy and very nice to put up. I'd done the first couple of sheets at the top, then gave Tom a quick lesson and handed over to him, so he did the bulk of the hanging while I measured, cut, pasted and offered bits of advice. Tom is very good with his hands and he was a natural paper hanger. It took me back to childhood when my mum used to hang wallpaper for people along Manchester Road. She did it for extra money, along with a bit of dressmaking, and I'd help her by scraping off the old paper and doing some pasting and cutting. The smell is very nostalgic and (to my nose) quite pleasant. Tom and I worked until about 7pm, then started next day before 8am and finished just after 1pm. It was a really nice job and there was a roll of wallpaper left over, which he can take back to the shop.

The finished room

Poor Margaret had to get the train down to Sam's and, to make matters worse, the main line was closed for engineering work, which meant she had to get a different train via Cambridge. She actually got there in good time and was sitting with Sam and Lucy drinking red wine when I arrived about 2pm. Sam had done a nice roast beef dinner with rice pudding for pudding. I was starving. We left just after 6 and were home for around 8pm. I took the new route through Crouch End and Muswell Hill to the North Circular. That seems to work quite well - much better than the Seven Sisters Road and Archway.


Back in London again today (it seems I'm never away from the place!) and the big news was the new King's Cross station. It's still getting the finishing touches with work going on here and there, but the old entrance/exit is now just an exit and you come in through a new entrance hall at the side. It's quite nice, although modern stations seem more like shopping centres. This isn't as bad as St Pancras, but there are lots of shops. We were held up at the barriers in the morning when lots of people seemed to have the wrong tickets, so it was a bit of a crush. I'll get in the first carriage tomorrow so I can get to the barriers good and early.

Skiing holiday - the journey home

I set my alarm for 3am to give me chance to have a cup of tea and not be rushing around too much. I think I'm so used to early mornings with my commute, that it's really not too much of a chore. Margaret's dad always got up before 6am (the result of years of early starts when he worked on farms) and was always ready for bed at 9pm. It didn't make him healthy, wealthy or wise, but you do get into a routine that's hard to break. Even when I'm on holiday, I find myself awake at 6am.


We got the car packed and everywhere tidied up for a prompt departure and Sam took first turn at the wheel. I think he was a bit sad at the holiday ending and it is also a bit depressing starting that early. Still, traffic was light and we were making good time - so good that Sam got flashed by a speed camera (here's hoping that he won't get a ticket).


I swapped with him at the first petrol stop after about 100 miles and Sam had a snooze while I drove. It was obvious that the sat-nav was taking us back a different route and Lucy said it often did. It had found three different routes back from Nat and Tibor's. I stuck with it as it was still showing a respectable arrival time in Calais, but I would have taken a different autoroute (the one we came down on in fact). I got more and more concerned as we got closer and closer to Paris until, in the end, we could see the Eifel Tower and the Sacre Cour. Those south-east suburbs of Paris are bloody depressing, thank heavens I don't live there. How can the centre of Paris be so beautiful and the suburbs so grim?


Eventually, we hit the Boulevard Periphique for about 10 miles and took the A1 for Lille past Charles de Gaulle airport and Gonesse, where we stayed years ago when Tom and Sam were quite small. The idea was that we'd get the train into Paris, but there was a French rail strike that week, so we visited Versailles instead. That's definitely not the route I would have chosen - all the way up the Autoroute de Sol to Paris then A1 to Lille and Calais. We changed driver at 310 miles (quite a stint, but easy driving) and Sam finished off the last leg into Calais, where we were able to get an earlier ferry.


His sat-nav was definitely having a laugh - when we got off the ferry in Dover and I set off for the M2 to London (a route I've done lots of times), the sat-nav wanted me to turn around and go via Canterbury! I can't say too much because we bought him the sat-nav for his birthday. We were back in London just after 4pm (12 hours door-to-door, or 13 if you count the clock change). I was able to get the 4.28 back to Peterborough from Finsbury Park and was home about 6pm. It was definitely worth setting off early, we didn't hit any traffic to talk about and it might even be worth going overnight another year.


Nice to see Margaret, Gravel and Holly again and I was back in time to see the last bit of light before a nice supper and a gin and tonic. I bought two litre-bottles of Bombay Sapphire gin on the ferry (£28 for the two) and it really does make a superior G&T. So much so that I had to have another to make sure.

Skiing holiday - ski man forgives Sam

I wasn't skiing on our last day due to my sore leg, so I started off by returning my hire gear. Both Lucy and I were looking forward to Sam getting another telling off for not looking after his skis, but the chap was in a much more mellow mood. He did say that Sam's were the second worse skis he'd seen that year, only beaten by a child's set where it looked as if he'd been skiing down the gravel drive.


Sam did say that he could tell a huge difference having had the skis serviced. He said it was like shaving with a new razor after using an old blunt one.


I spent the day washing up, cleaning out the stove and listening to Money Box on my iTunes podcasts. I've been using Facebook to chat online with Margaret and we had a little conversation late morning so I was up to date with all the news. It would have been nice to have had Margaret along and, had I known the arrangements earlier, I could have sorted out our car and got the dogs in kennels. Perhaps next year.


We were planning a 4am start, so it was an early night all round.

Skiing holiday - snow, low cloud and sore leg

Wednesday was a great day, but I had clearly overdone it. In the evening my leg was very swollen and sore and next morning it was little better. The fact that there was low cloud, some snow and freezing temperatures was some consolation for not skiing.


Sam and Lucy were in no hurry and we decided to spend the morning in Bourg-Saint-Maurice, doing some shopping and having a look around. After lunch, they'd go up the mountain and, hopefully, find some better weather. 


We went to Super U to get more supplies. Sam loves French supermarkets and I must say that I agree - they are much more interesting than UK ones. We got a number of provisions, including some ingredients for a tartiflette that evening. Lucy wanted to have a look in Intersport next door so we walked across there to look at ski gear. There was a dog tied up outside the next door shop and I was wondering whether to go an give him a pat when this chap in front of us decided to try to be friendly and almost had his hand bitten off. Later, as we were heading back, the grumpy dog gave a young child a gnashing and made him cry. What a mean dog! Maurice and Meribel would never be so bad mannered.


Bourg is a proper town, unlike most ski resorts, which are just a collection of budget-build apartments, hotels, bars and shops. It stands at an elbow in the Isere valley and would have been an important market town and crossroads in years gone by. The Col de Petit St Bernard rises from its edges and crosses the Alps into Italy at 2188 metres. It was still closed due to snow. After Bourg, if you carry on up the Isere valley you come to Val d'Isere (one of the more upmarket ski resorts) and another high pass into Italy.


Hannibal crossed the Little St Bernard pass with his elephants to attack Rome during the Punic wars and countless pilgrims would have taken that route from southern France and Spain on the way not to burn Rome, but to avoid burning in hell. The Little St Bernard doesn't have any dogs or a community of benevolent monks - that's the Great St Bernard - although the monks have sold most of their monastery to a hotel developer and a few years back they announced they were getting rid of the dogs. There was, of course, an outcry and a rich businessman set up a trust to care for them. One of the conditions was that a smaller number were to be kept on the pass to maintain the tradition. Napolean crossed the Great St Bernard pass to attack the Austrian army that was occupying Italy and he defeated them at the battle of Marengo after taking them by surprise in the rear.


Bourg maintains an old-town charm in the centre, although much of the town is now devoted to the skiing industry, including the funicular and large SNCF terminus. We called in at the World Famous Cheese Shop to see if we could buy some Beaufort cheese. I'd read there were three types - summer, winter and farmhouse. Beaufort is a town high in the mountains above Bourg and the summer cheese is said to have a scent of meadows and high Alpine pasture. The place was absolutely rammed with a long queue to buy cheese, so we decided to give it a miss, but it was interesting to see the massive cheeses, like thick millstones, waiting to be cut.


I had a crepe in a little cafe on the main street and also bought Margaret a couple of presents - a pair of sheepskin slippers and a silly ornament for the Christmas tree - a fluffy white bird with a hat and scarf.


Sam and Lucy went skiing in the afternoon, but were not out for long as it had been very icy and quite difficult to stay upright. That prompted Sam to get his and Lucy's skis sharpened and polished at Polaire Star, the ski hire place and workshop at the bottom of the funicular. It's run by a British family - a Scot, his wife and their grown-up son. Poor Sam got a telling off for letting his skis get in such a state. Lucy said he was told that he didn't deserve nice things, but I think she was having a laugh at Sam's expense.


We were chuckling about it all night and I think Sam was expecting another lecture the next day. In the evening, we enjoyed our tariflette, which was very nice and had the advantage of requiring a glass of white wine, which meant Sam and I could polish off the rest of the bottle while Lucy had a snooze. The apartment has a woodburning stove in the lounge/kitchen/diner and I'd lit it earlier in the day. It's very efficient at heating the place up and you soon have to shut it down or it's like a sauna.

Sam and Lucy on the terrace - that's Meribel snoozing

Me and Meribel on the terrace

Skiing holiday - great day's skiing

We hadn't expected a good day on Wednesday. Snow Forecast.com, the oracle that Sam consults every evening and morning, had predicted a cold and cloudy day with 4mm of snow. Snow Forecast.com, if you want my opinion, is about as useful as hanging a fir cone outside your window.


The day dawned bright and clear - near perfect, although it promised to be cold and so we were well wrapped up. I had on my motorcycles gloves, thicker socks and my long johns.


We started with the usual warm up and then headed across to the Mont Blanc chairlift, which is the longest in the resort and brings you up to the top of the Belverdere blue run. There was a great view of Mont Blanc, completely clear of cloud in the cold morning air and almost directly to the north of us.


This time we carried on down Belvedere, which is nice and wide, pretty even gradient with just one or two steeper bits which we were able to master easily. I would have liked to have gone a bit faster, but Guy was keen to show us some new techniques and to have us practise those he taught us yesterday.


We're all trying to execute a parallel turn, but I find it quite hard and even harder at the slower speeds we were travelling at. I can see that one or two of the group have got it better than me. Fagin, despite her puffing and piste dodging, is a pretty good skier and the new bloke, who looks like Tim, is very precise and considered but does seem to go very slowly. One of the exercises we did yesterday was to place a pole on the inside, more or less at the apex, and to turn around that. We were practising this down a long steeper section and I got the rhythm just right. The sexy Irish woman had followed me down and when we got to the bottom she said she'd been copying me and it had been amazing.


Just as I think I might be making a skier, Guy pops up with another drill. The ones I couldn't do for the life of me were the stepped turns and the skating movement. The stepped turn is to be used when you want to turn into the hill to lose speed. I involves lifting the inside leg and steering to upwards, then transferring the weight onto that leg, bringing the other leg parallel and then reapeating the whole sequence a couple of times until you've come to a natural stop. I was not very good at this. Guy didn't even bother to comment, he just looked at me. The skating movement is what you use when you've lost speed and need to cross a flat piece of piste or even go slightly uphill. You push with one leg and glide with the other on alternate legs. It's like ice skating (which I have done in the distant past) but much harder on skis because they're about 1.7 metres long. We all had to do it in turn and I watched the others carefully. The trick is to really tarnsfer the weight with an exaggerated rocking motion. I started off quite well and then the co-ordination went to pieces. "Come on Eric," said Guy in a disappointed tone.


The next exercise was slipping the edges on a steep slope. You start with your skis at right angles to the slope with both inside edges gripping the slope and holding you in place. To move down in a slow, controlled manner, you turn both skis downwards, so the edge loses grip and you slide down, controlling the descent by the angle of the ski and the bite of the edge into the snow. You can slide sideways, allow some forward movement or even backwards if that's helpful. I quite enjoyed this exercise. To get the contol, you have to lean out over the slope, which seems an unnatural (and slightly scary) thing to do. Some of the girls didn't like it much and Guy got really cross with the English girl who was too frightened to move for about five minutes.


We'd learned this on the last day at Val Thorens, but Guy had taught it much better and given us several chances to use it. My turns and side sliding meant I was much more confident on steeper slopes and on the way back, we did a short red stretch and were allowed to go down the steeper side of the chairlift approach.


Guy and I were getting along fine. I think he appreciated my careful (and somewhat exaggerated) observation of the slope - like a begoggled meerkat on skis. On the chairlift, I found myself in the middle between Guy and Aofe and we had a nice chat about various things from jobs, where we lived, driving through France, where I was staying and what Guy does in the summer. It turns out he has a bed & breakfast in the Verdun Gorge in Provence. He liked it that I'd heard of the place and that I knew it was popular among motorcyclists for its great roads. He asked me if I "practised motorcycles" and seemed impressed when I said I did. Guy always likes to point out local attractions (eg Mont Blanc) and he was telling us about the mountains in summer, Apparently, Belvedere is a nine-hole golf course and when he asked if anyone playeed golf, I was the only one who did. I got more brownie points by joking that I'd be able to hit my driver a long way and mimicking a golf swing into the valley. From naughty boy to teacher's pet in two days - I could teach some of my group a thing or two about upward management!


We went back up the Combette chairlift and at the top Guy announced we'd be going on the Vezailee drag lift. That nearly caused a riot among the French with Fagin leading the dissent and breaking into English to get us onside. In the end, she was persuaded to give it a try and it brought us higher up the slope just above a little slalom area. We used the slide and turn skills to complete the slalom course and then headed back down the blue into Arc. There was just time for another quick run and a try at the steeper end section and that was it. The French, one of the Irish and the English girl had bailed by this time. 


It was a great morning's skiing and I really felt that I'd made progress.


I wasn't meeting Sam and Lucy for lunch today. I thought it was a bit restricting for them to meet me every day, so I'd suggested I'd come down and back to the apartment in the afternoon, leaving them free to roam where they wanted to. Later, Lucy said she'd had her best day skiing ever, so that was good to hear.


The walk to the furnicular was not too bad. On previous days, I'd stopped for lunch before going down and had stiffened up, meaning it was a real effort to get going again. I walked through the square and up to the Mont Blanc lift and then skied down a little pisted road to the top of the furnicular. As the train came up to the top, there were two children in the driving seats, with the operator stood behind them. Only in France would that happen. Over here, could you imagine a Victoria Line train pulling in with a kid at the controls? Actually, the only thing VL drivers have to do is open and close the doors, so it's not unlike a furnicular.

Maurice - she loves chicken

It had been a great day and I was met by Meribel, who enjoyed very much one of the leftover chicken legs from the previous night. We were soon joined by Maurice, so they shared a second between them.


It had been a great day's skiing, but in the evening my leg was really sore and swollen - almost twice the size of my right leg. I rolled a spare duvet to raise it in the night to try to get the swelling down.

Skiing holiday - the biggest pizza ever

There were new people in our ski class this morning. Devon Mike had been promoted to the higher group and there was a chap who looked and sounded just like Tim, so much so that I considered asking him if he had a brother.


No sign of Claire and I asked Devon Mike if she was feeling any better. She was not throwing up any more, he reported. I don't think that relationship is going to last very long. I asked him if he would come skiing again and he said he'd like to but it would have to be a boys' holiday - Claire isn't coming again. To make matters worse, they're staying in Les Arcs 1650, so apart from skiing and eating (neither of which suits Claire right now) there's precious little else to do. I suggested they might visit Bourg during the afternoon and I bigged the place up, told him about the restaurants and the World Famous Cheese Shop. To make matters even worse, they had travelled by coach from Poole overnight and they were heading back on Saturday at 7pm, getting back to Poole at 10am the next day. I can imagine that being a journey from hell even if you'd had a great holiday. Poor old Claire will have to sit and listen to him going on about his skiing for 15 hours!


Fagin was busy puffing away and we had lost a couple of the group (two of the French girls who were struggling) back down to the lower group. One of them had bailed out the previous day, had refused to go down the final slope and had taken her skis off and walked down in a Gallic huff. I don't think Guy had been impressed.


It was a nice day, but not as sunny and very cold. We started off on the usual short run, but then got a longer chairlift called Cachettes and came down a long blue called Belevedere and onto Arpette, then Mont Blanc blue run and back down into Arcs 1650. It was a really good long run, quite tiring, but I was much happier. I was working hard on getting a parallel turn executed and also learning to use both edges on the slope and to slip the outer edge so that I could descend steeper slopes without losing control.


I was also taking care to make sure I was looking up and around me, especially if Guy was in the vicinity, but he seemed a bit more chilled out. One of the French girls skied straight into me so that her ski became trapped in my binding and Devon Mike took out one of the French girls and the sexier of the two Irish women. She is called Aofe and wears sunglasses and a headband to keep her ears warm but let everybody see that she had long blonde hair. She didn't looked too happy with Devon Mike, who had brought the right helmet today, but Guy didn't bat an eyelid. It's all right if you take people out, but look down at the ground and you're dangerous - humph!


From Belvedere, we got a good view of Monte Blanc which is not far away, although its top was covered in cloud. At the bottom, we had one last run down Combette and it was a real effort. The French women, led by Fagin, were getting a bit grumpy and Guy had to shoo them all onto the chairlift like a sheepdog. Oddly, when Fagin is moaning, she moans in English; I think she's trying to get us on board. To be honest I'd have happily gone straight to the bar, but it was good to do that short blue again as a bit of a wind down. Now Guy was making us do the blue, rather than the green diversions, and the top section, which is pretty steep seems much less daunting than it did on Sunday.


In the square, I bagged a table at the bar we'd been to yesterday. We'd decided to eat lunch rather than take sandwiches, because the weather forecast had been for cold weather, but as it happened it was warm and sunny in the square, so we sat outside to eat. Sam decied to go with the plat du jour, which was descriped as beef and potatoes and sounded a bit like a stew. It turned out to be cottage pie. Lucy and I went for pizzas and they were absolute monsters. I had ham, cheese and mushroom which arrived with an egg in the middle, sunny side up and Lucy had the Savoie special, which was even bigger. The pizza base was thin and crispy, but the topping was an inch think in places.


After that and a couple of beers, it was quite hard to move. A morning's skiing is about as much as I can manage and the walk back from the square to the top of the funicular was a real trudge in ski boots and carrying skis. I know ski boots serve a specific purpose, but once they're unclipped from skis they are instruments of pure torture, they weigh a ton, are hard to walk in (especially downstairs or downhill) and getting them off is a nightmare. You open one fastener and while you're opening the next, the first one has clipped itself on again!


Back at the apartment, Meribel was waiting for me and greeted me like a long-lost friend. Sam and Lucy were not too far behind me as the day was quite cold and I think that large lunch was telling. It's 10 minutes down to the funicular to pick them up.

Meribel doesn't mind being a stooge in a comedy pose.

Meribel (top and bottom)

I'd been thinking about the price of hiring skis and asked Sam how much he'd paid for his. He thought his had paid for themselves in four holidays; and I was thinking that I would be happy with some secondhand skis - I wondered if the ski hire places sold them on at the end of the season. Then it struck me - e-bay ... I paid £100 to hire skis, boots and poles, so if I could get myself kitted out on e-bay, I would be in profit next holiday.


I had my netbook with me and there was good wi-fi access in the apartment, so I was on e-bay that night with Sam's expert advice. I bid on some skis a chap was selling in Ramsey, but lost those when they went over £25, but bid on some in Nottingham and I've won those. I'm waiting to see if I've got a pair of ski boots and poles.


Guess I'll have to come next year now!

Skiing holiday - ski school, dangerous Eric

There was a further blow on Sunday, apart my my injured leg, and that was discovering that my ski lessons would have to be in the morning, not the afternoon. I think there just weren't enough people to run morning and afternoon. It meant that we had to make an 8am start from the apartment to get down into Bourg and get the funicular up to Les Arcs.


I woke up in a positive frame mind and keen to have a go at ski school, even if I felt some considerable trepidation about it.


There was a whole new set of people at ski school in the morning. I recognised Josette and Devon Mike turned up sans Claire. I think there had been words and he'd stormed out of their hotel room saying: "that's a bloody waste of money for one day's skiing." Trouble was, in his anger, he'd picked up her helmet instead of his and felt a right Charley when he tried to put it on when he got to Ski School. The official story was that Claire was not very well. Actually I sympathise with her. Learning to ski once you're past 40 is much harder than it would be in your twenties. She and Mike were (I think) second partners and not yet married. You can see the pressure on her to be young and active to impress her new man - yes, let's go skiing that will be great fun, I've always wanted to. Then when she got the skis on, couldn't stand up and was terrified of the slope, it didn't seem such a good idea. Luc did his best on Sunday, even skiing down backwards in front of her holding the tips of her skis in the snowplough, but it was a hopeless case.


Anyway, I was pleased to have Mike to talk to, but it didn't last long - after one run down the learner slope, Luc handed me over to Guy (pronounced Gi) which was the more advanced group. Actually, I didn't mind as it looked as if Luc was going to have people just toiling up the slope and snowploughing down all morning and my leg wasn't feeling too bad. We headed up Combette, but instead of turning right onto the steep blue, we headed left on an unmarked green that snaked under the lift and down a couple of side runs through the forest where it was easy to snowplough all the way. We went back across the blue where I'd fallen the day before and there was a more gentle slope down to the lift.


Guy was an older chap and a bit of a grump. Half our group was French (all women) including one I should call Fagin (pronounced Fag-in) who sparked up every time there was a break of a few minutes. Her favourite trick was to get up the lift first so she could have a crafty puff at the top while everyone else got up there. Fagin must have been mid-forties, but was actually pretty good and there were about five French women in total. Most of them had some English and they were OK to chat to on a basic level. The rest of the group was two Irish women (again in their 40s) and a young English couple. The Irish women were with their husbands and children, who could all ski well enough, so they were in ski school to catch them up.


Guy was not a man to suffer fools. When the English girl fell and was trying to put her skis on facing down the slope he was yelling up at her in a garbled message; I knew what he was trying to say, but she was in a panic and he was getting crosser and crosser. "For god's sake, you tell her," he said to her boyfriend.


Later on, I was the target of Guy's grumpy temper. I'd been practising turns and I'd been leaning forward to keep my weight on the outside ski and he must have seen my head down a couple of times. "Why do you look down all ze time?" says Guy. "What iz you looking for down zer. Are you looking for zee mushrooms? I tell you what zer are no mushrooms, zey are under ze snow, you will not find any. Eric, you are dangerous, you must look where you are going, I do not want you to crash into me."


Dangerous Eric indeed! I knew exactly where I was going. Still, it was a good morning's work, but I was glad to finish and was waiting in the square at Arcs 1650 when Sam and Lucy joined me. It couldn't have been a different day than Sunday; the sun was weaker and the wind stronger. We sat in the arcade in a little circular seat to eat our sandwich, but it was cold; too cold to be comfortable, so we went inside a little bar and found the last seat. Lucy had a vin chaud and we had beers and a crepe - walnut and honey for me.



After lunch Sam and Lucy wanted to do a bit more skiing, but I was whacked. My leg had really stiffened up during lunch so that I could hardly move when I stood up. I headed down the furnicular and went back to the apartment to chill out with Maurice and a new dog, which I christened Meribel. I tried them with a few treats, which they weren't sure about, but eventually I discovered they quite liked bread. Gravel and Holly would kill for some cheese rind, but this pair showed no interest. Maurice was the top dog, but also a bully and wouldn't let Meribel come near me. She kept sneaking up and would then get bitten and chased. I told Maurice off and eventually got them both either side of me. Maurice was desperate to get around to bite Meribel, but when she moved I did the old "ah-ah" command, which seems to work for dogs in England and in France.


Sam and Lucy were not too late as it was quite cold and I ran down to the furnicular to pick them up mid afternoon.

View from the front of the Blueski Chalet looking down

To Bourg-Saint-Maurice

The side view of our apartment. Our terrace was at the back.

Front of the Blueski Chalet

View from the terrace, looking south down the Isere Valley

Skiing Holiday - Supermarkets and Sore Legs

Sunday dawned so sunny and warm that you'd think that you were in summer, not early spring. We were up quite early and Sam and I drove down through Bourg to the supermarket. We had been hoping to go the night before, but our late arrival put paid to that. French supermarkets are so similar, but so different, to English ones. The fresh vegetable section is so much bigger and there are also massive (in comparison) meat sections with varieties of dried sausage hanging up alongside whole hams, plus a huge cheese section.


Sam is in charge of cooking this week and we managed to get everything we needed, plus some treats and some booze. 


Back at the apartment Maurice was there to welcome us and the weather was getting still warmer.


Next job was to get up to the ski area. To do this, we had to drive down into town where there is a funicular railway up to Arc. It's quite a good arrangement - your ski pass covers you for the furnicular and it's a very regular service and about 10 minutes up to Les Arcs. The lower village is called Arcs 1650 (after its elevation). There's now an Arcs 1800, Arcs 1950 and Arcs 2000 - it's as if the Arcs are playing Top Trumps with each other.


I had a ski lesson booked for 2pm, so we went to the furnicular station where we bought the ski passes (just over 200 Euros for six days) and hired my skis and boots (another £100). I was pretty excited at having another go at skiing and at the top, I headed straight for the slopes. Les Arc is quite different to Val Thorens; it's on the side of the valley, where Val Thorens is in a bowl at the valley head. At VT, there's a big learner area with two covered "magic carpets" that mean you can easily go up and down a wide learner area. In Les Arcs, the learner area is tiny at the bottom of the slope to the lifts and you have to walk up and ski down.


I saw where I had to meet and then we went up a short ski lift called Combettes with a blue run back to the village. I thought it would be a good idea to discover my ski legs before my lesson, but on the second run, on a steeper section, I fell and hurt my leg. It was a real sharp, sickening pain and at first I thought I'd fractured my leg. It was actually a torn muscle (I think) in my left calf and after getting my ski back on I fell again near the bottom and gave it another tug.


Not a great start to my ski holiday and I thought I might be done there and then. I had some paracetemol, some ibuprofen rub and a rest while Sam and Lucy went off skiing. I tightened my boot good and firm and asked at Ski School if I could go in the beginners' group. I knew they'd just be pootling about, learning to stand up and snowplough and I thought that would be enough for me and keep my leg mobile.


There was only four people in the group - myself, a French girl called Josette from Paris and an English couple - Devon Mike and his partner Claire. Claire was clearly not having a good time. She couldn't stand up; couldn't steer and kept falling over. The instructor Luc (pronounced Look) said I could go in the higher group, but I said I'd stay put. I managed two-and-a-half hours of ski school, but left a wee bit early pretty pleased to have managed to stay going.


A beer in the sun was very pleasant and Sam and Lucy were not long. I met them at the bottom of the Mont Blanc ski lift and we headed home for dinner. My leg was very swollen and sore, but bearable and I said I'd see how I felt in the morning before deciding whether to ski.


What a bloody mess!

Skiing holiday - an early start

It's a long way to drive to the French Alps, but if there are a couple of drivers it's not a bad way to travel. You have all your things there at hand, you can carry far more stuff and you don't have to suffer the hell that is airports and air travel. Of course, there are French farmers blocking roads and French fishermen blocking ports from time to time, but that is temporary hell - airport hell is permanent.


For Sam, Lucy and I, travelling by car meant an early start - 4am from London, so that we could get the 6.40am ferry from Dover. Sam drove and we got there in good time. It was quite foggy as we approached the coast and for the whole of the crossing. It was a bit slower than we expected, probably because of the fog, and we lost about 30 minutes.


In France, the drive was pretty uneventful. It always amazes me what a massive country France is compared with England and how much countryside and farmland there is. It was the usual Autoroute south, starting through the First World War battlefields, past St Quentin, Laon and heading for Dijon then Chalon Macon. We cut through the French Jura, heading towards Geneva, but turned south before the Swiss border for Annency, Chambery, Albertville. Moutier and Bourg-Saint-Maurice. The cost in tolls was about 75 Euros.


Apart from a short drive in London and the last 10 miles, it was motorway or dual-carriageway all the way. We stopped only for petrol (twice) and Sam's car does around 300 miles before it needs filling. I calculated we were getting 35mpg and with an 11 gallon tank, we would have a range of around 380 miles, but we went by the petrol gauge, which is clearly set to allow a good margin and to encourage you not to run out of fuel.


We were making really good progress until we hit some minor delays in the Jura, but we got going again and it was easy running past Chambery when things slowed down again. The last section of the journey is up the Isere Valley on the N90 and this is the route to the most popular ski areas in France - Val d'Isere, Tignes, Les Arcs, La Plagne, Courcheval, Meribel and Val Thorens. Consequently, it being French half-term, the road was exteremely busy. We were stop start past Albertville to Moutiers and, after Moutiers, the last 10 miles were a real crawl.


We had hoped to get to the apartment before dark, but that hope was soon dashed and Sam was doing a lot of map peering while I drove. We were looking for a road up to the left before Bourg where we could cut across. The map we had was a pretty poor copy and when we did turn off, we made a mistake of turning left too soon because a road was only feintly marked. We soon realised the mistake, but the road we were on (to a place called Vulmix) was steep and narrow and with snow and a drop on one side or the other, it was a while before we could turn. Back we went and found the road up to Villaret de la Rosiere. It was pitch black by now and the road hairpinned up the mountain with a steep drop into the blackness, but we came into the village, which is tiny and built either side of a steep central road. Sam couldn't work out the instructions and they made sense only after you'd done the journey and in daylight. Basically, the further into the village you went, the steeper and narrower the road became. The last bit was a first gear job and the road wide enough for just one car. Then the road turned sharp left and the gradient increased still further. At this point, there was a small space to the right where you could park a car, but no barrier and a drop of some hundreds of feet. Sam got out of the car to have a scout and soon came back to say the apartment was just round the steep bend. At this point, it would be remiss of me not to mention that in the act of doing a hill start on a 1 in 3 and trying to let a Frenchman in a 4x4 get past, I put a minor scratch on Sam's nearside rear bumper where the car was backed against a wall in the pitch darkness.


Anyway, we were there! The apartment was very nice and we were greeted by a very thin border collie from the adjoining farm. She was called Maurice (by Lucy) and we soon found she was top dog of a pack of collies which became regular visitors. It's surprising how a description of a place can be misleading. Sam is thinking of renting this place long term, so that he can spend six months in France for the ski season. He thought it was just outside Bourg-Saint-Maurice (which it is), but he didn't know it was 500 feet above it reached by a road that would be scary for a lot of people in summer and would be mighty scary with a frost or snow (not unknown in these parts). I did find a path down to Bourg later in the week, but it would be a hard route in the dark and snow and quite a climb as well.


Anyway, we were here, unpacked, comfortable and ready for our holiday.