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Woldingham takes to the slopes

Ski Trip to Tignes – Easter 2008

The trip began early on Sunday 23 March, with a meeting time of 5:30 am at School and 6:00 am at Gatwick Airport.  We had a short coach journey to Gatwick, where we met the rest of the group.  Smoothly checking ourselves in with our group leader, who unfortunately got to see our passport photos, we headed swiftly to Security and then on to the duty free shopping area to get something to entertain us on our plane journey.

Arriving in Grenoble at about 11 o’clock (French time), we were amazed to see that it was snowing, something we haven’t seen for a while.  We had no problems with collecting our luggage, and soon we had our suitcases loaded and had started our 3 hour coach journey to Tignes, having one stop, for the loo.  Everyone was quite puzzled at seeing holes in the ground for toilets.  Only one toilet was normal, and, too scared to use the holes, everyone queued for the normal toilet.  When our coach turned up the mountain to reach the resort of Tignes, some people got a bit sick with all the windy roads but the rest of us were gobsmacked with the amount of snow.  Some people on the trip had never seen snow like that before so it was a great experience for them.

When we arrived at the hotel, we had to take our extremely heavy suitcases up about 100 flights of stairs!  Considering the fact that most of us couldn’t even lift our suitcases, this was a challenge!  Reaching our rooms on the third and fourth floors of the hotel, some of us were quite surprised with the standard of the rooms.  The people in the hotel before us had had a bit of a party and left rooms 402 and 403 a momento of their party, all over a balcony and all over the carpet.  This, however, was cleared up but there was a slight smell left in one room, which wasn’t too appetising.  The hotel did use about twenty different smelling air fresheners to take the smell away which instead sent it to the other extreme, barely allowing the guests to breathe, so on the first night they were separated in to three different rooms.  But by the end of the second day they returned and were eventually satisfied.  Everyone else got used to the hotel, giving their rooms their own personal touch to make it feel like home.

Before dinner we all went to boot, ski and pole fitting; for some of us this took a long time but after a couple of hours we’d finished and were all suitably equipped.  By the end of the first day we were settled in and “attempted” to go to bed early in order to prepare us for our first day of skiing the next day.

Woken up by Mrs Halpin at 8:00 am and feeling tired, we dragged ourselves out of bed, and changed into suitable clothes for breakfast.  This was a typical French breakfast, with croissants, bread, ham, cheese, yogurt, etc.  We all enjoyed the breakfast at the hotel because the croissants are so much nicer in France compared to England.  After breakfast we had about two hours of free time before our first skiing lesson began at 11 am.  Most of us were panicking about what to wear underneath and how many layers, but we were all fine in our coldest skiing day so far.  At about 10:50 we went down in our ability groups and were introduced to our instructors.  The first morning for some of us consisted of reminding ourselves of how to ski again.  Some people, the beginners, started learning from scratch and some of us went straight down black runs.  But whatever we did, we enjoyed our first morning and were incredibly excited about the rest of the week.  Having lunch, at 1:30, returning to skiing again at 3:00 for another two hour session, eating dinner at 7:30, we had a very busy day, and we repeated this pattern every day for the rest of the week.

On top of skiing, the staff accompanying the trip never failed to provide an activity to keep us all entertained.  We had a quiz, bowling, swimming, the match box task, the modelling and designing for the Fashion Show and the Dominic Bond task consisting of drawing, poem writing and small model making.  As you can see, there were a variety of activities, each one thoroughly enjoyed and all the  winners were treated to a drink at the bar (non alcoholic of course) from Mr Murtagh – weren’t we lucky?!

Since we were on a ski trip, there were always going to be a lot of funny stories of what had happened.  From snapping a pole to losing a pole, from falling off the drag lift to falling off the chair lift (at the end).  From going flying down the mountain in a constant snow plough, to flying off the side of a mountain into very deep snow, from teachers falling over to instructors being in love with teachers (Rebecca!).  As you can see some of us at Woldingham are pretty out of control.

Katie Heywood

Year 9