Monday, January 26, 2009

Tignes, France - New years in the Alps

For this Christmas / New year break we decided to the French Alps. Well organised by Nae (sound familiar?) we ended up with a crew of about 20 and headed to Tinges / Val Disere, by bus!! Was cool, I think it took about 20hours and we were all champing at the bit to get on the slopes when we arrived.

The resort was unbelievable, probably over a hundred lifts and miles of good terrain. Being re-united with Johnny Asher, Rachel, Becky and Alex (my old skiing crew from NZ) i was forced to work my ass off on the hill and pretend i wasn't dying on the chairlifts due to being out of shape ;-) We did a lot of back country and were stoked to have the resort to ourselves with a foot of powder on New year’s day Just sooooo good! Much like the skiing the après ski was far from relaxing. With such a big crew it would never be easy to stop those few quiets from snow balling, and given the time of year and fantastic days few tried. We stayed in a hostel type environment, with all meals provided and some kind of event on every night. For New years a famous French DJ was playing and attracted a huge crowd, with loads of pyrotechnics etc the night and vibe was awesome.

On the way back Linda and I went to Geneva. The Swiss capital is a beautiful city, although due to the bus delays we didn't get to spend as much time there as we'd hoped. From there it was a quick flight to Holland, and a day later flew back to the UK. Straight out of Gatwick and in a taxi i was off to the Freedom Health & Safety conference – funny how relaxing it felt to be back at work ;-)

Geneva