I'm Back.

Hello readers and welcome to my holiday blog, just as I promised.

I appoligise for it being rather late, but since coming back on Friday, I haven't had time to sit down and type.

That has now changed and here I am, ready to blog...

I will begin a week and a half ago, at 5:00am Friday morning... Which is when Father arrived to pick me up to head off to Coventry airport. We arrived there for 5:45am-ish and were the first of our party to arrive. After about 20 minutes the others turned up and, after an argument with the woman on the desk about suitcases and how much they weighed, we checked in.

We went in to the departure cupboard (sorry, I mean "lounge") and waited 45 minutes before being called. No sooner were we through the gates and on the aeroplane, we took off on our 2 hour flight to Salzburgh airport.

We touched down at 10:15am local time and got our luggage. we then located the minibus and driver who would take us to Saalbach and set off for another hour and a half. After reaching Saalbach and dumping the luggage, the hardcore skiiers, myself included, got our gear on and went skiing!

We stayed local, and didn't stray out in to the neighbouring resorts, though that is quite possible to do. The areas are all connected by pistes and ski lifts so from Saalbach you can ski to Hinterglemm, Vorderglemm, and Leogang making the milage possible to cover, very high. In fact if you want to see the area just click here for an interactive map with pics and videos!

We kept it low-brow though and did a day skiing the Saalbach side. Afterwards we got in, got unpacked and relaxed. I began reading Richard Hammonds Autobiography; On the edge. It is a powerful book charting his childhood and up to his crash. His wife then takes over the writing in the period where his memory was damaged and they then share the writing from his reccovery up until he was able to fully go home. If you haven't read it, do so. It is very good.

Dinner was at 8:00pm and we went down ready for a feast. The food is always good in Austria and I ate all 5 courses with room to spare. (probably because I had been awake for 13 hours, had done 4 hours solid skiing, and hadn't eaten since breakfast!)

After dinner we sat in the bar for a while before going to bed... Actually this formula would become the norm'

wake > brekkie > ski > lunch > ski > relax > dinner > bar > bed > repeat.

Saturday! The first "proper" day! We got up to some seriously sunny weather and, after people who needed to hire equipment had done so, we got up the mountains...

... Now I'm going to take a moment to show you some pictures. Mr Thomas did a bit of showing off before he went on his round-the-world tour on his overgrown pedal boat, and I realise that the islands of the Carribean, or the bahamas, or wherever he went can easily outstrip any European destination, but I will have a go at "top trumping" him with some scenic photo's I took throughout the course of the week...

On the piste,looking at the valley floor (that light green bit in the middle) just to show you how high up we are (and I'm not even at the top!)

Looking across to the other side of the valley. The centre peak is "Hone Penhab" standing 2112 metres above sea level.

Some lovely scenery that I hope competes with some of lanks sunny, sandy, beachy, pics.

Traditional mountain lodgings. I took this as I though it might look a bit "postcardy." I reckon it would make a nice post card.

Anyway we had our first full day skiing, exploring Saalbach and hinterglemm. At lunch we stopped at a restaurant and had Goulash. Again, this would become the norm' since goulash is high in calories, but isn't a heavy meal. We skiied until 4:30pm and then came down.

After we got back to the hotel we had a quick drink before getting ready for dinner. I had time to read a chapter of my book before going for the evening meal though, and time again after for another chapter before going to bed.

Sunday. Just as before we got up to a sunny day and after a quick breakfast went skiing. We skiied over to Leogang via Vorderglemm along one of my favorite trails. I remember it from last year. It is possible for any skier to enter the trail at "full throttle" and emerge from the other end doing a fair lick of speed. From there the piste turns through a wide right hand bend, but if you cut it tighter you can cut that corner altogether and go about 200 yards off-piste, with a rather good jump at the end of it that lands you back on the run...

... Guess which one I went for?

... Yep! I only got about a foot-and-a-half in the air though, as I scrubbed off some speed in the deep powder to stop my skiis from bedding down and shooting me out of my bindings!

Anyway, lunchtime came and I decided that pizza was the choice of meal!

Afterwards we skiied on until an impressive 5:00pm. After drinks at the bar, I headed up to the room as I wanted to read more of my book before dinner. After the meal myself, dad, Andy, and Simon decided to check out Bobby's bar, as it is the only bar in the entire valley to sell a certain beverage...

WOOHOO! Yep, Guinness and it's a bloody-good pint, too! I remember my eyes lighting up as I saw the Guinness sign over the door the year before.

After drinksies, we headed back to the hotel for bed.

Monday. We ended up doing a sort of "Grand Tour of the valley" as we skied just about everywhere. We must have racked up some high milage, and at the end of the day the "laaads" (me, father, Andy, and new recruit Simon) decided to ski "Black 1" from the top of Saalbach mountain to the botom (thats 4km) non stop! That IS NOT an easy task but we managed it alright...

Oh, before I forget, during the course of the day, there was a disscusion about a particular run, and whether it was possible to get "air time" of a ridge that wasn't intended to be a jump. Naturally I had to give it a go...

There we go! question answered! A jump... a whopping 4 inches high!

We were extremely tired by the end of the day and I ended up going straight up to the room and falling asleep for an hour. At dinner I was, for some reason, still tired, but woke up when we were in the bar!

Tuesday... Tuesday we got up to an overcast day. The sky was a little dark, but we went skiing anyway.

We spent the day skiing around in the colder air and experienced some fresh snowfall. Always a sign that skiing the next day would be on good powder, unless it froze and we had a blizzard, in which case the following day would be hell.

We got on with it though and ended up having a good day skiing, made better by the fact that the sun emerged for an hour or two in the afternoon.

In the evening we went to Bobby's bar for a pint before Dinner, but it was dinner itself that proved interesting... Allow me to show you the menu...

No... Your eyes aren't decieving you. That does indeed say "kangaroo" as an entree course. Cool, huh!

Wednesday... We awoke to a blizzard. It was going to be hell..

We got up the mountain, but visibility had dropped to around 5 metres. After a while though, it dropped to around 3 metres and we were experiencing what is commonly refered to as a "white out" we battled the elements until after lunch, where it did clear up slightly, though not by much. We came down via an unusual route though weather this was intentional or not, I'm not sure.

We were glad of some dinner later on in the evening and popped back to Boby's bar for a guinness on the night time.

Thursday. The last day skiing. The weather wasn't to bad for us, though a bit cloudy, it didn't snow, and the sun had brief but regular appearances in the sky...

By the end of the day we were quite sad. We had a couple of commemorative photo's though I only have one of just the "Laaads"

From left to right: Me, Simon, Father, Andy.

We left to go back to the hotel knowing that we wouldn't have our skis on our feet for another year to come. At dinner that evening we had Ostrich steaks....

Friday... Coming home day. The taxi picked us up at 8:00am and we headed on out to salzburg airport. I bought some choccs and a T shirt saying "No kangaroos in Austria" as I thought it was ironically funny since there was a portion of one, cooked medium rare, on my dinner plate a few days earlier.

After the usual waiting we got onboard to find that myself and father had been allocated seats 1A and 1B right at the front... (seriously, I thought we'd be doing the flying!)

After a 2 hour flight we touched down at Coventry, got our stuff fairly quickly, said our goodbyes and headed our seperate ways... It was quite sad, really. Father dropped me home, where I unpacked and relaxed for a bit before going to see my nan.

Now I could blog right up until today, but I wont as I will leave this week intact ready for next weeks blog...

TTFN readers!