A lifelong love of skiing has led me on many strange and exotic adventures. In
my late teens, while most of my contemporaries were taking edifying gap
years in India, I got myself a job in an Italian ski resort. In the mornings
I stitched together overpriced leather bags to sell to tourists; in the
afternoons I skied, evading the price of the ticket with a nod and a wink
from my friend who manned the chair lift.
In my quest for snow-based adventure I have narrowly avoided falling off the
Matterhorn in a whiteout, been stretchered off a mountain by two speed-freak
rangers and - most terrifying of all - spent a night on a British snow train
bound for France.
Now that I am a grown-up and sober mother of two, skiing is one of the few
things that still fills me with boundless enthusiasm. There is something
about even the slightest dusting of snow on the most cursory of inclines
that induces a feeling of uncontrollable excitement in me. Of all the things
that you can only really do when you are young and carefree, I miss skiing
the most. It takes only the tiniest snowflake to rekindle the passion.
Financially, the slopes of Europe are out of the question. Even without the
unfavourable exchange-rate, so many resorts have now priced themselves out
of the ordinary person's market. Accessible places such as Chamonix and
Méribel, where the skiing is easy and the snow reliable, now seem to want to
cater exclusively for the sort of people who arrive by private jet, swathed
in Prada, with armies of nannies in tow (mysteriously, they still seem to
exist, despite all the public apologies and televised handwringing). If you
can afford to shell out €60 for a tartiflette, then well done you: I cannot.
I'm sure that if I explored, went less mainstream, I might find more
reasonable prices; but with two small children to indoctrinate - sorry,
encourage - I can't be doing with complicated arrangements. A spirit of
adventure is all very well when it's just you, your iPod and the mountain;
quite another when you're carrying armfuls of mittens, hats, spare socks and
Naa (a small piece of moth-eaten fleece without which my son, 4, cannot
live). I need organisation, efficiency, certainty - and easy access to the
loo.
What the Scottish ski resorts - Glenshee, Cairngorm, Nevis Range, Glencoe
Mountain and The Lecht - lack in reliable snowfall they make up for in
convenience and cost which, this year, easily clinched it. The resorts are
varied, with the Nevis Range being the newest and most developed (it even
has a gondola), while Glenshee is an isolated resort favoured by day
trippers from Edinburgh. I ended up choosing Cairngorm, near Aviemore, which
is the biggest and arguably the best of the country's five resorts.
In case you've never been, it's worth a trip to this part of the world simply
to experience the sheer beauty of this gentle mountain range. I'm not much
of a geologist myself, but I am reliably informed that the terrain - deep,
wide valleys with high, rolling peaks - is glacial in nature, the result of
great tongues of ice forcing the land outwards and upwards over millions of
years.
Driving through it is like being on a very big rollercoaster. It's Nature at
her grandest - but also her most generous: the light has a golden, buttery
quality to it, the silver birches cover the hills in a purple haze, the
horizon stretches for miles.
The children and I flew in to Aberdeen airport on a cold and ominously rainy
night. We picked up our hire car - a querulous Korean 4x4 (you really do
need a 4x4 if you're bound for what the Scots, with their inimitable talent
for understatement, like to call “hills”) and headed off to Aboyne, where we
were staying with a friend. Within minutes we were completely lost
(steamed-up windows, dark, winding roads, tired children, general
uselessness on my behalf).
On the mobile phone in a lay-by, I managed to communicate our predicament.
After hoots of laughter (“You're in Inverurie? How in God's name did you end
up there, lassie?”) the husband of a friend's colleague was roused from his
fireside to lead the way back to civilisation. I don't suppose there are too
many men who will part with their glass of whisky on a stormy Friday night
to rescue a ditzy stranger from a pickle entirely of her own making - but
this one did so, and with extreme grace.
The next morning, rested, restored and only slightly embarrassed, we headed
for Aviemore. From Aboyne it's roughly a 90-minute journey, but the drive
takes you past Lecht, a smaller but nevertheless lovely resort, when open.
At 2,090ft, it is particularly good for teaching small children to ski because
it has several short lifts and gentle blue and green runs. Last weekend my
friends in Scotland were regaling me with tales of their exploits on its
slopes; sadly, when we drove past, the snow had fallen victim to high winds
and everything was closed.
