A hard life in Sammy Ski School

First day of our ski holiday, so what's the best thing to do? Go skiing of course, which is exactly what we did.

I have reached a certain level of competency skiing which means I can get around most blues without too much difficulty (or so I thought) and so there's no necessity for ski school. I made the mistake of giving Ecole du Ski de France the cold shoulder and signing up for Sammy Ski School instead.

Sammy Ski School is run by an Englishman spending a few months in France for the 2014 season and it's a school of hard knocks. We started up the Cachette lift from Arc 1600 and skied down Belvedere and Arpette back to 1600 then up again and down Belvedere to Arc 1800, where we picked up the Trans Arc cable car to mid point and skied down Plan Bois to Derby which took us up to 2331m.

Ecole du Ski de Sam (or ESF) knows which runs sort out those pupils who lie about their standard. The statement: "yes, I'm comfortable on blues"  would be tried and tested on Renard - a long blue with many steep sections and few level-ish parts to recover your tired thighs. Renard proved I was more "les vert" than "les blue" and nowhere near "les rouge".

At the bottom, I was pooped, so we skied down Maitez back to 1800 then up the Chantelle lift and down Gollet back to Arc 1600. Gollet is a long slow ski road through trees that's so gentle you can hardly gain any speed. Then, just as you're feeling this ski lark is pretty easy, there's a short steep bit where they obviously ran out of gradient.

Oh dear, my legs were shot and I was not skiing well. Being a lazy bum with those squats during the past month was coming back to haunt me.

It had been (for me) a good day's skiing. More distance than I'd done with ESF, but there were some basics to sort out. Body position is the main issue (I tend to lean back), but there other issues. At the moment I feel as if I'm looking like a cross between a zombie and Frankenstein's monster.

The recovery medicine from (for me) a hard day's skiing.