I'm counting this as our first ski trip - that's certainly true for Sally, and close enough for me given that my previous ski trip was 30 years ago. As I frequently can't remember what I did last week, 30 years ago surely can't count.
So, should a youngish, probably in reality middle aged, person start to ski? The answer, of course, is yes! Why?....because keeping active will help us stay young, it's tremendous fun and, particularly for us, we are buying an apartment in the French Alps, so it would be pretty daft not to ski when the slopes will be on our doorstep.
We had a fantastic holiday. I won't win any style prizes, but was willing to point my skis downhill and give the blue, and the occasional red, run a go. As a beginner, I found it was as much about confidence as anything else. We had two hours of ski school lessons in the morning before grabbing a break with a coffee or vin chaud just before midday. It was pretty busy being the February school holidays, so we put the skis back on just after midday for a couple of hours while most people had lunch and the slopes were quieter. Sally then took the cable car back to town while I skied, slid and occasionally fell down the mountain to meet her for a late, leisurely lunch.
The ski resort of Morzine has grown out of an alpine village and it still has that traditional alpine feel. Having heard that it was quite a lively resort, I was a little worried that it might be too much of a party place (see, I really am middle aged!), but we really didn't see that side at all. Our apartment won't be ready until Spring 2018, so we stayed in a hotel. Next time I would definitely book a self catered apartment rather than a hotel for this type of holiday. But really, I can't wait for our apartment to be ready so that we can use that in both the winter and the summer.
The skiing was actually the easy part. Making a GoPro video of our holiday was much harder! I shouldn't be too harsh on myself as I'm just at the start of my GoPro journey (this is my first video), but it's safe to say that I have a lot to learn in terms of both the videoing itself and the subsequent editing. In the end, I used GoPro's semi-automatic editing app as I had so little useful footage and found the more advanced editing software so tricky to use. I guess that for a first effort, it's not so bad, and it is only 60 seconds, so not too long to look through.....go on, have a look for yourself!
I'm half tempted to book another week's skiing at the end of March but, thinking of the budget, I will control myself and hold off until next season.....I can't wait.