The possibilities for going skiing in Italy are almost endless. At first, we had big plans for hiring a chalet for our February holidays with a group of friends, but as usual, the big plans didn't quite work out and we ended up heading to Aosta for five days, staying in a hotel and having skiing lessons at the ski school in Pila.
Pila is a ski resort in the Valle d'Aosta, the tiny bilingual region in the top left-hand corner of Italy that borders France and Switzerland. On our first day in Aosta, we went into a bar and the man behind the counter, realising that I wasn't Italian, spoke to me in French. I don't know whether it was because he heard me speaking to Mr A or because I accidentally asked for “water with marbles” instead of “water with bubbles”, but he finally switched to English and I was left feeling a little bit disappointed.
Aosta was a Roman town and there are still some Roman remains to be seen, but the centre, which has a lovely big square and pretty pedestrianised streets, is mostly medieval. We stayed in the Albergo Mancuso, which was cheap and conveniently located five minutes walk from the cable car up the mountain to Pila. Our room was basic and decorated with bright green curtains and an orange and yellow candlewick bedspread that would have made any 1970's housewife proud, but it was big and had a full-size bathroom with a nice hot shower and the hotel staff were friendly and helpful.
Before I go on to describe the skiing lessons, I should probably say something about my prior experience of skiing. The first time was at Hillend, the dry ski slope in Edinburgh when I was about ten. All I remember of that was being very hot from walking up the hill with skis on and the pain of sliding on spiky plastic brushes ever time I fell over. The second time was seven years ago when I was in my first year at university and a friend offered to take me and two of my friends to Glencoe with his family for the day. The Scottish ski season is generally pretty unreliable, but this was a good year and the mountains were covered in snow and glistening in the sunshine as we drove up. We survived the ski fitting and the chairlift up the mountain quite well, but things started to go wrong when we tried to get on the drag lift. Friend No 1 managed it but Friend No 2 and I failed to get on or fell off a couple of times and were eventually sent by a member of staff to walk to the nursery slope with our tails between our legs so that all the people in the queue behind us could actually get up the mountain.
Embarrassment aside, we actually quite enjoyed sliding around the beginner slope for most of the morning, but the ground was very icy and when our friend, reappeared at lunch time, he told us that the snow was much better up at the top. He and his family helped us with the lifts this time and his parents were incredibly kind about helping us to ski down the run, despite the fact that we were falling at every turn, and, in my case at least, every time I got too much speed up and didn't know how to stop.
And that was how I ended up doing red runs on my first real day of skiing. I remember the terror, I remember the ache in my legs all throughout the day, I remember not being able to brush my hair afterwards because my arms were so sore, I remember the bruise the size of a tea plate on my thigh, and I remember, despite everything, the sense of achievement at the end of the day.
It was unsurprising, therefore, that my first skiing lesson in Pila was something of a let down. I decided that it would be a good idea to start from scratch and signed up for the beginners' lesson. Unfortunately, in Italy, most people only take beginners' lessons when they are under five, so I was put in a group with about ten three year olds and two teenage boys and led off to the nursery slope. We had about ten instructors and helpers with us, but given that the children were too young to even realise that they were supposed to try to slide down the slope and basically needed an instructor each, I and the two boys were more or less left to our own devices and after about half an hour it got boring. The nursery slopes in Pila have magic carpets, which are essentially conveyor belts, instead of lifts, so there wasn't even the excitement of trying to catch a button lift. At one point, I felt nauseous and sat down with my head between my legs, and the instructors didn't even notice because they were too busy pulling toddlers down the slope and making sure they didn't fall off the magic carpet. Given that the ski school had about 170 instructors available, I thought that it was pretty bad for them to put adults in groups with such young children, especially as the kids were basically getting one-to-one tuition and the adults, who had paid more, got next to nothing.
The next day, therefore, I asked to change to a higher level group. Unfortunately, the next group up was composed mainly of five and six year olds who could at least stand up on their skis but weren't particulaly keen to actually go down a slope. I thought I was going to have a repeat of the day before but luckily the instructor realised as we set off and three out of the five children started to cry, that this group wasn't going to be much fun for me either, and handed me over to Renato, who was teaching a slightly more advanced group with older children who actually wanted to be there. There was another adult as well, the mother of one of the kids. She and I became known as “le mamme” (“the mums”) for the rest of the week, but we had great fun together avoiding the kamikaze kids and being scared of doing any jumps.
Renato was a great instructor and the rest of the week was fabulous. On Tuesday, we went down easy blue runs and learned the beginnings of parallel turns. On Wednesday, there was a covering of fresh powder on the slopes, the turns became easier and suddenly Renato's instruction to “lean further down the mountain” started to make sense. We went down our first red runs that day, which was probably why my muscles hurt so much on Thursday, and I didn't feel like I skied so well. Pila is a great resort for beginners though, with lots of blue and red runs and nice trails through the forest, so it was fun just trying out all the different places to go with someone who knew what they were doing to stop me from accidentally finding myself on a black run. Friday was the last day of the course and everybody was supposed to participate in a competition. My fellow “mum” and I were reluctant at first, more because of the idea of being watched by the proud mummies and daddies on the side than by fear of the course or the competition, but Renato convinced us and it wasn't too painful in the end.
While I was doing all of this, Mr A was having snowboarding lessons. He found it tricky at first, mostly because standing up on a snowboard when you're 6'4” tall is very difficult, but by the end of the week he was making it down the runs as well. He was lucky, too, that toddlers don't learn to snowboard, so at least everybody in his group was over the age of ten!
By the end of the week, both of us felt confident enough to go skiing by ourselves, so all we have to do now is save up some more money...
Pila is a ski resort in the Valle d'Aosta, the tiny bilingual region in the top left-hand corner of Italy that borders France and Switzerland. On our first day in Aosta, we went into a bar and the man behind the counter, realising that I wasn't Italian, spoke to me in French. I don't know whether it was because he heard me speaking to Mr A or because I accidentally asked for “water with marbles” instead of “water with bubbles”, but he finally switched to English and I was left feeling a little bit disappointed.
Aosta was a Roman town and there are still some Roman remains to be seen, but the centre, which has a lovely big square and pretty pedestrianised streets, is mostly medieval. We stayed in the Albergo Mancuso, which was cheap and conveniently located five minutes walk from the cable car up the mountain to Pila. Our room was basic and decorated with bright green curtains and an orange and yellow candlewick bedspread that would have made any 1970's housewife proud, but it was big and had a full-size bathroom with a nice hot shower and the hotel staff were friendly and helpful.
Before I go on to describe the skiing lessons, I should probably say something about my prior experience of skiing. The first time was at Hillend, the dry ski slope in Edinburgh when I was about ten. All I remember of that was being very hot from walking up the hill with skis on and the pain of sliding on spiky plastic brushes ever time I fell over. The second time was seven years ago when I was in my first year at university and a friend offered to take me and two of my friends to Glencoe with his family for the day. The Scottish ski season is generally pretty unreliable, but this was a good year and the mountains were covered in snow and glistening in the sunshine as we drove up. We survived the ski fitting and the chairlift up the mountain quite well, but things started to go wrong when we tried to get on the drag lift. Friend No 1 managed it but Friend No 2 and I failed to get on or fell off a couple of times and were eventually sent by a member of staff to walk to the nursery slope with our tails between our legs so that all the people in the queue behind us could actually get up the mountain.
Embarrassment aside, we actually quite enjoyed sliding around the beginner slope for most of the morning, but the ground was very icy and when our friend, reappeared at lunch time, he told us that the snow was much better up at the top. He and his family helped us with the lifts this time and his parents were incredibly kind about helping us to ski down the run, despite the fact that we were falling at every turn, and, in my case at least, every time I got too much speed up and didn't know how to stop.
And that was how I ended up doing red runs on my first real day of skiing. I remember the terror, I remember the ache in my legs all throughout the day, I remember not being able to brush my hair afterwards because my arms were so sore, I remember the bruise the size of a tea plate on my thigh, and I remember, despite everything, the sense of achievement at the end of the day.
It was unsurprising, therefore, that my first skiing lesson in Pila was something of a let down. I decided that it would be a good idea to start from scratch and signed up for the beginners' lesson. Unfortunately, in Italy, most people only take beginners' lessons when they are under five, so I was put in a group with about ten three year olds and two teenage boys and led off to the nursery slope. We had about ten instructors and helpers with us, but given that the children were too young to even realise that they were supposed to try to slide down the slope and basically needed an instructor each, I and the two boys were more or less left to our own devices and after about half an hour it got boring. The nursery slopes in Pila have magic carpets, which are essentially conveyor belts, instead of lifts, so there wasn't even the excitement of trying to catch a button lift. At one point, I felt nauseous and sat down with my head between my legs, and the instructors didn't even notice because they were too busy pulling toddlers down the slope and making sure they didn't fall off the magic carpet. Given that the ski school had about 170 instructors available, I thought that it was pretty bad for them to put adults in groups with such young children, especially as the kids were basically getting one-to-one tuition and the adults, who had paid more, got next to nothing.
The next day, therefore, I asked to change to a higher level group. Unfortunately, the next group up was composed mainly of five and six year olds who could at least stand up on their skis but weren't particulaly keen to actually go down a slope. I thought I was going to have a repeat of the day before but luckily the instructor realised as we set off and three out of the five children started to cry, that this group wasn't going to be much fun for me either, and handed me over to Renato, who was teaching a slightly more advanced group with older children who actually wanted to be there. There was another adult as well, the mother of one of the kids. She and I became known as “le mamme” (“the mums”) for the rest of the week, but we had great fun together avoiding the kamikaze kids and being scared of doing any jumps.
Renato was a great instructor and the rest of the week was fabulous. On Tuesday, we went down easy blue runs and learned the beginnings of parallel turns. On Wednesday, there was a covering of fresh powder on the slopes, the turns became easier and suddenly Renato's instruction to “lean further down the mountain” started to make sense. We went down our first red runs that day, which was probably why my muscles hurt so much on Thursday, and I didn't feel like I skied so well. Pila is a great resort for beginners though, with lots of blue and red runs and nice trails through the forest, so it was fun just trying out all the different places to go with someone who knew what they were doing to stop me from accidentally finding myself on a black run. Friday was the last day of the course and everybody was supposed to participate in a competition. My fellow “mum” and I were reluctant at first, more because of the idea of being watched by the proud mummies and daddies on the side than by fear of the course or the competition, but Renato convinced us and it wasn't too painful in the end.
While I was doing all of this, Mr A was having snowboarding lessons. He found it tricky at first, mostly because standing up on a snowboard when you're 6'4” tall is very difficult, but by the end of the week he was making it down the runs as well. He was lucky, too, that toddlers don't learn to snowboard, so at least everybody in his group was over the age of ten!
By the end of the week, both of us felt confident enough to go skiing by ourselves, so all we have to do now is save up some more money...
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