We were up at 2am, on my birthday, for a drive from Newcastle to Manchester airport.
We flew with Jet2, who have the noisiest air conditioning known to man, impossible to talk or relax on the flight.
We arrived at Chambery airport midday for a 2 hour coach ride up to the resort.
We booked our holiday with Le Ski a trusted chalet travel company that we have travelled with for a few years now.
As I was still learning to snowboard I booked a 4 day intermediate course with a company called Pro-Snowboarding. I took a group lesson which I think is the best way to learn as you meet other people who are at the same level as you and you can share stories if your bumps and bruises. Outside of lessons you find you are surrounded by 'experts and whizz kids' so it's lovely to be amongst others at the same level as you for a few hours. I would definitely recommend Steph, my instructor at Pro Snowboarding, being South African he spoke perfect English,spoke very clearly, explained techniques excellently and gave personalised instruction for improvement. I had received instruction from a rival company previously but never received such personalised advice.
I think if I do another ski holiday I'd def try to take day 3 or 4 off completely. People are often quite weary by day 3:4 and really do bees a day break to recover.
The bars and restaurants in the mountains are expensive but you really can't beat the view,so spending a few extra euros on your vin chaud is definitely worth it. The weather was so warm whilst we were in Val I took a fancy to the bars deck chairs and stripped off to my t- shirt- now i understand why I've seen photos of the girls out in their bikinis - the place may be full of snow but there are occasions where it's bloody hot out there - you are closer to the sun after all! The bars I. The mountain are also a great opportunity to have a chill out whilst other crazy energetic people in your party can break away and have their crazy hour what you stuff your face with Belgian waffles whilst their not looking.
Although Le Ski chalets are fully catered the chalet hosts do get 1 day off which gives you the opportunity to try some other French cuisines. Thursday was our chalets day off so we booked into a restaurant, opposite Victors, called La Casserole. We chose this restaurant as it offered cheese and steak fondues, which you don't see very often at home. The food was fantastic I had a huge smoked salmon and salad starter, with a very generous portion of salmon whilst my husband had a cred beef and Parma ham salad. The starters adds definitely. If enough for 2.
If you are keen to see how you've improved or fancy checking out where or how fast you've been, there are some great apps for smartphones. I downloaded an app called Phreez for my iPhone and my husband also had it on his Android. The app shows and plays back the route you cover throughout the day and shows you lots of interesting graphs illustrating speed. Difficulty and altitude. You can even upload the results to Facebook to share your day with friends. you don't require an Internet connection for this app, it simply uses GPS to track you, which is not chargeable. But you do have to wait until you regain Internet connection to check out your results.
Another app i found useful was itrailmap. The only problem with these apps is they seem to encourage the butters to go as fast as possible.
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