… for the first time since 1996 too. We (that is, five of us) went to Super Besse for the day. However it wasn’t as exciting as you might imagine, the reason being that despite the weatherman telling us that it was going to be the best day of the year so far, we had the typical Auvergnat hanging cloud on the mountain. This meant that firstly you could hardly see your hand in front of your face (so don’t expect any photos) and secondly all of the high runs were closed off and so everyone was concentrated on just two or three runs.
And I mean everyone too. There were several coach parties of schoolkids, a party of Asian students, loads of business-type folk in matching ski suits and so on. And of course you might expect that I made myself persona non grata with some folk. As Terry reached the bottom of one of the runs a party of schoolchildren stretched out across his path. And Terry, much to my surprise, shuddered to a halt.
“You missed out there Terry” I yelled. “You would have got 100 points for that lot, you know!”
“What?” asked a British person standing in the queue next to me (there were quite a few Brits there today)
“You know” I replied. “10-pin bowling. They line up the kids in formation across the piste and the inexperienced skiers see how many kids they can get. A whole ski class counts for 100 points!”
The monitor of the ski class clearly understood more English than she was letting on to, and she gave me a glance that would have curdled milk at half a mile and made a derogatory comment. Mind you, I know a few of those myself, as she discovered.
What was surprising was that after one or two runs up the baby slope I remembered all my technique. And even more surprising was that I could still fit into my Makro Man ski suit, which I discarded for use as a winter overall back in 1994 when I bought my “Bulgaria ski school” ski suit (which is with my skis and boots back in Brussels and which I will be rescuing).
But at 16:00 it was impossible to continue. It was freezing cold and you couldn’t see who you were ploughing into. But it’s whetted my appetite and rekindled my desire for skiing after all this time.
Banff here I come!
The drive back to Liz and Terry’s was difficult, and the drive back to here was worse. I had to hack lumps of ice off Caliburn’s windscreen and then inch my way home as the freezing rain that had fallen had transformed the roads into a skating rink.
But at least I got home, which is more than someone did. There’s a dark green Peugeot saloon on its side in the ditch near Gouttieres.
