Skiing In La Plagne, France 2006

When my parents first suggested that we learnt to ski I wasn't exactly "up for it" and I put it down to my lack of confidence at the time and my reluctance to try new things. However seeing as my parents were experienced skiers they wanted us to give it a go too. So every saturday morning we were at the dry ski slope for lessons and anyone will tell you, if you can ski on that stuff then you can most definitely ski on snow! Also, you do not want to make a habit of falling over on the matting, IT WILL HURT!!! So once we had finished our lessons we went on our first skiing holiday to Alpe d'Huez in France. This holiday consisted of ski school in the mornings and off with the parents in the afternoon. I can most definitely say, it was these lessons where I gained the confidence I needed for the slopes and also picked up the technical side too. They were definitely worth it.

Our second ski holiday was to La Plagne in France and this time there were eleven of us, all family members. For the purpose of this blog I will mainly focus on what me, my sister and two cousins got up to. We flew with Flybe and during the flight (whilst me and Ryan were busy posing and taking pictures of ourselves!) there was some commotion across the aisle. Shane was holding the plastic inner frame of the window in his hands! We all were laughing but the parents looked slightly concerned! We tried telling the stewardess who did not find it funny and in fact didn't actually do anything about it! So ever since then we've had an ongoing joke that during the flight the window fell out! We should have taken it home with us as a souvenir!

The best part of this holiday was the sledging. All us kids rented a sledge each and conveniently behind our accomodation was a perfect hill, steep enough to get some speed yet short enough to walk back up. Most afternoons after skiing we were out there and caused some trouble it seems! We built ramps at the bottom to fly over and ended up having snowball fights with other kids on "our turf". Other events included me almost sledging into a dog that was running up the slope (expert swerving I must add) and Ryan's sledge sliding into someones apartment patio doors resulting in the occupants shouting at him in English and then French as they were unsure what nationality he was!

Right for this next bit I need to set the scene... The slope we were sledging down was parallel to a road and between the slope and the road was a steep, bumpy "off piste" hill. So, Shane was sat on his sledge on the edge of this hill and I thought it would be a good idea to sledge straight into the back of him. Consequently he fell off and the sledge continued to fly down the bumpy hill and came to a stop on the road. Shane proceeded to scramble down the hill as fast as possible to retrieve the sledge as a 4x4 was driving towards us. Shane didn't make it in time. The 4x4 ran straight over the sledge! Of course, Ryan and I were in absolute stitches but Shane was panicking because we had to return the sledges at the end of the holiday and one of the brakes were slight buckled. Luckily the parents found it just as funny!

So they were the highlights of our holiday to La Plagne. The next one is to the USA so stay tuned for more larking about :)

Ryan and I on a chair lift in La Plagne, France.