Summer & ski schools

It’s amazing how quickly Friday comes around. Leeds has been bathed in sunshine for the past week which has seen the Alpine Ethos team with hedgetrimmers and strimmers in hand meaning our garden is now tidied and ready for a BBQ on Sunday. In addition our tans are topped up and England are through to the last 16 (as optimistically predicted in last weeks’ blog).

The sun being out has also been an inspirational force in the kitchen this week. Griddled aubergine and courgette pasta with mint and lemon dressing has been a particular highlight, (summer in a bowl!) as well as a little experimentation for next season. Gooey banana flapjacks should be a firm favourite during afternoon tea and the homemade chocolate sorbet Heather knocked up on Wednesday night is competing for a place on the menu too.

This week Heather’s been speaking to one of our February half-term bookings for next season who were enquiring about suitable ski schools in Meribel. Whilst it may seem early to be thinking about this now, peak weeks, especially half-term book up much quicker than most and now is exactly the right time to be making enquiries and bookings if you want to ensure the type of lesson, instructor and time-slot you want.
Some of our half-term guests are a party of 3 adults and 5 children and rather than putting their children into group lessons, they are exploring the option of a few private lessons for them. Price-wise it works out similar to a week of group lessons and but they are guaranteed an instructor all to themselves and can book the times and days they want allowing them some whole days on the slopes as a group as well as some children-free skiing time for the adults.

If you are looking to book lessons for peak weeks (or any other skiing/boarding hols for that matter), it is worth doing a bit of research before you go. Many French resorts now offer a much wider variety of ski schools than ever before. Two schools that we recommend to our guests are Parallel Lines and New Generation in Meribel who were set up by and are run by Brits. Both have gone to great effort to differentiate themselves from the standard ESF (Ecole du Ski Francais) offering. Their instructors are largely native English speakers (a real differentiator in the eyes of many of our guests last season) and they pride themselves on their variety of lessons. You can choose from the usual group classes for various abilities and ages, technical classes to improve your piste performance and/or skills sessions where you choose your area of focus. This choice goes a long way to ensuring that everybody, regardless of age and experience can improve their skiing whilst on holiday.

Snowboarders visiting Meribel aren’t left out in the cold either. Snowboarding school Cab9 are ready on hand to provide expert tuition by experienced snowboarding instructors. Note the distinction – these guys are not ski instructors who snowboard but people who live and breathe snowboarding and provide second to none tuition in all aspects of the sport.

So, if you’re planning a trip to the slopes this winter, why not check out what lessons are available to get the best out of your holiday and don’t forget to book early!

Heather, Andy and Benny