Monday, May 16, 2005
Crikey - it's still here!!
Yes despite months and months of neglect, my blog is still here for the world to view. I was truely pathetic during my second ski season, and completly failed to update my blog, even once! So perhaps now that I am 30, and therefore mature and sensible (well, yes, I think that was always me really!), I will be true to my blog and update it regularly....
I'm going to start by cheating and filling in a few gaps with a mega blog!! (ok, so I've copied and pasted from the e-mail I've just sent!)
20th April 2005
We returned from La Plagne by coach on Thursday 21st April and were back in Addlestone shortly after 9am, somewhat lacking in sleep, but as coach journeys go, pretty good! It was then a bit of a whistle-stop tour to see people (and it was really good to see you!), and un-pack, pack, shop, etc! Then on Sunday mum kindly lent me her car and I drove to Swindon to get Gerwyn, and then we headed up to see Lisa, Cameron & Maggie and stay over night. Maggie was as gorgeous and smiley as she always is when I see her (although rather covered in raspberries when we arrived) and despite her best efforts to keep us awake all night, our untrained baby ears were not disturbed by her cries, and it was Lisa and Cameron who had the joy of sleep deprivation!!
Monday 25th April
Monday morning we made the short journey to Northwich and our Headwater training camp for the week – not that it was camping: bunk-beds in little chalets in a centre run by and for people with learning difficulties, who fed us huge amounts of food for breakfast, lunch and dinner!
The training was pretty good, and thorough, and there seemed a lot to take in. Unlike Silver Ski, once in the Loire we are on our own, so the training has to be done this way. But by the end of the week we’d got an idea of our guest bookings for May and what we’d have to do, and a pretty good notion of how to check a bike for serious problems, and how to fix the minor ones!! Time will tell how much we really know!!
Saturday 30th April
Saturday morning we got up to have a leisurely breakfast to find that one of the 4 minibuses had a slow puncture, so some of the boys set about changing the tyre whilst the rest of us sat back thinking how glad we were that that wasn’t our van! Gerwyn and I then set off for Addlestone, with another couple following us in a minibus, and the other 3 minibuses all taking various routes to Dover. We got to Addlestone around 3pm, and within 15 minutes Tony arrived in the van – great! we thought, until Tony got out and immediately lifted up the bonnet, and told us about the green radiator liquid he’d just left on the M25!!!! We found the hole in the radiator from which the fluid had leaked, and with our vehicle repair knowledge between the four of us still equalling about 0, we plugged the hole (thanks Dad for the tools!) and then gave the van a test drive to the motorway. It ran ok, but on a closure look under the bonnet, we know found what was meant to go in the hole – a tube! Previously we’d thought a cap had got loose and come off, but now realising we were stopping the flow of radiator fluid, we started to get concerned about carrying on…. At this point, Sue from next door came out and announced she’s a member of the AA, so she’d give them a call, pretending she was travelling with us! It was about 5.45pm by this point, with our ferry crossing booked for 6.30pm, and the AA said they may not be with us til 8! Should we risk it and drive anyway? None of us were sure, but we were getting pretty tempted to do so. Luckily the AA man turned up at 6.15pm and took one look and said we needed a complete new radiator!! Officially, we should not drive the van. Unofficially, we could drive the van for about 20 minutes and then we’d risk blowing up the entire engine!!! At this point we were all very glad we had not decided to chance driving to Dover, because we’d probably be broken down on the hard shoulder of the M25!!!
Being early evening on Saturday, and a bank holiday weekend, we’d not even be able to phone a garage before Tuesday morning, at which point we were all supposed to be happily settled into our new regions…. So we checked with the boss and he agreed to pay £250 to get the van towed to Dover!! So we finally made the ferry at 11pm, only needing the van to move a few hundred metres to get onto it! Once on the other side, we had a nervous 10 minute drive off the boat and to a motel, and we finally collapsed into bed at 2am!
Sunday 1st May
Sunday morning we abandoned the van at a local Citroen garage, along with a note in our bestest French that it needed fixing and we’d phone to explain and pay!! Then another one of the minibuses came and picked us and all our gear up, and we were again on our way! Today’s destination was Chamonix, French Alps (not actually that far from La Plagne!!) Headwater is part of the Thompson and Crystal group, so the vans we needed to pick up were kept in Chamonix! We made it by 6pm – a much easier journey!! And then finally, Sunday morning, Gerwyn and I got our van, and at about 10.30am left the others to head for our new home in the Loire!!
Monday 2nd May, 6pm
At last we arrived, and to a lovely little (well, quite big really) gite. Downstairs we’ve got a kitchen, dining room, lounge and toilet, and then upstairs 2 bedrooms, toilet and large bathroom. We’ve got a double garage where all our bikes are stored, and plenty of space on the driveway to park the van, and work on bikes. The gite is interestingly decorated with a variety (i.e. non-matching) of flowery wall paper, tiled floors, and coverings (e.g. throws over the sofas and protective plastic covers over table tops, sideboard tops which are all wooden). It takes some time for your eyes to get used to all of this, and despite repeated warnings about the décor from experienced Headwater staff, nothing quite prepares you for the real thing!!
Our time “pre-guests” was spent finding hotels and looking round them, checking out the best routes between hotels, checking route notes for ease of use, and accuracy, and just seemingly endless tasks, that just when you thought you were getting things in hand, you remembered something else you needed to do!! We had a few challenges along the way: 1 hotel that changed hands over the winter, with no sign of life from the new owners, and therefore had to be scrapped – so we are using another hotel (already used by Headwater), but this meant we had to update route notes quite significantly, as the 2 hotels are about 15km apart!! Similary with a restaurant being used on a Sunday night when a hotel restaurant is closed: the restaurant went bust 6 weeks ago, and no-one in Montlouis opens on a Sunday night! We eventually found a superb restaurant in Vouvray (as in the very nice wine!)… And then there was one section of a cycling route which is now being rudely interrupted by the construction of a new motorway!!! We didn’t think the guests would want to cycle through that, so again, a new route needed to be planned and written! It’s a good job we’re seasoned seasonnaires, and not phased by this sort of thing!!
Thursday 5th May
Tony Blair won the election
Sunday 8th May 2005
Then came the occasion of Sunday 8th May 2005 – my big 3-0!! We wanted to make it as non-work like as possible, so decided to test the walking route – but on bikes, so that we could complete all 3 stages in one day. Gerwyn had added up the km’s and reckoned 43…. About half way through he realised he’d added up wrong, and it was going to be more like 55km! Luckily, it was a sunny day, and it started well – however as time wore on, we came across parts of the route notes that weren’t very clear, and were mainly cycling on very bumpy tracks (that of course would be fine on foot!) and after a few detours, we eventually got home, after 8 hours on the bikes, and the best part of 60kms covered!! I should add at this point, that only a few kms from home, I still managed to get a wolf whistle from some blokes in a passing car – very satisfying under the circumstances!!!
We’d have been happy to collapse into bed at this point, but instead had a dinner date at the new restaurant we needed to “test” for Sunday nights – and it was superb!! We were wined and dined, and slightly spoilt by the owners, who of course wanted to make a good impression with the prospect of regular customers!
The next day, my thighs and back-side ached rather a lot, but hell, I’m 30 now and still managed to do all that!! Gerwyn bought us a ride in a hot air balloon too, but unfortunately it was too windy on Monday to go, and we are still waiting for another good slot in the weather that fits in with our work schedule…but we’ve got all summer, so will get to fly at some point!
Wednesday 11th May
Our first guests arrived on Wednesday 11th – and were journalists!! Actually, they’ve been no trouble at all, nor have any of our guests so far. It’s quite different to the ski season: we meet them on day 1, sometimes collecting them from the station, then brief them and that’s it; they do the tour on their own, and then we seem them on the last day. As people can arrive every other day, we soon get to see lots of faces. Occasionally we bump into them at a hotel, or out on their bikes if we pass them when moving bags between hotels. We spend a fair bit of time driving about – but the roads are relatively quiet. We are getting the hang of preparing bikes too – luckily for us they are all properly serviced during the winter, but then stacked up for storage, so for starters we check them and do a few tweaks and give them a clean – there may be a bit more maintenance to do once they’ve been ridden!
Now that guests are here, and the “set-up” work is done, we are starting to get some free time – sometimes just an hour or 2 between jobs, other times a free morning if there are no arrivals or pick ups… Katy sent me out some good little cookery books for my birthday, and I’ve been making good use of those already. It’s actually really nice to experiment with a bit of cooking, and get some well needed practice in before the ski season!
Gerwyn has been preparing me for the imminent release of Star Wars III, by watching the others on DVD! However, he has now just discovered that even Tours cinema isn’t going to show it in English, so I’m not sure how far we are going to have to travel to watch it! Personally, I’d give the French version ago, but Gerwyn won’t understand much at all, and being a true Star Wars fan, that just won’t do….!!!!
0 comments
Yes despite months and months of neglect, my blog is still here for the world to view. I was truely pathetic during my second ski season, and completly failed to update my blog, even once! So perhaps now that I am 30, and therefore mature and sensible (well, yes, I think that was always me really!), I will be true to my blog and update it regularly....
I'm going to start by cheating and filling in a few gaps with a mega blog!! (ok, so I've copied and pasted from the e-mail I've just sent!)
20th April 2005
We returned from La Plagne by coach on Thursday 21st April and were back in Addlestone shortly after 9am, somewhat lacking in sleep, but as coach journeys go, pretty good! It was then a bit of a whistle-stop tour to see people (and it was really good to see you!), and un-pack, pack, shop, etc! Then on Sunday mum kindly lent me her car and I drove to Swindon to get Gerwyn, and then we headed up to see Lisa, Cameron & Maggie and stay over night. Maggie was as gorgeous and smiley as she always is when I see her (although rather covered in raspberries when we arrived) and despite her best efforts to keep us awake all night, our untrained baby ears were not disturbed by her cries, and it was Lisa and Cameron who had the joy of sleep deprivation!!
Monday 25th April
Monday morning we made the short journey to Northwich and our Headwater training camp for the week – not that it was camping: bunk-beds in little chalets in a centre run by and for people with learning difficulties, who fed us huge amounts of food for breakfast, lunch and dinner!
The training was pretty good, and thorough, and there seemed a lot to take in. Unlike Silver Ski, once in the Loire we are on our own, so the training has to be done this way. But by the end of the week we’d got an idea of our guest bookings for May and what we’d have to do, and a pretty good notion of how to check a bike for serious problems, and how to fix the minor ones!! Time will tell how much we really know!!
Saturday 30th April
Saturday morning we got up to have a leisurely breakfast to find that one of the 4 minibuses had a slow puncture, so some of the boys set about changing the tyre whilst the rest of us sat back thinking how glad we were that that wasn’t our van! Gerwyn and I then set off for Addlestone, with another couple following us in a minibus, and the other 3 minibuses all taking various routes to Dover. We got to Addlestone around 3pm, and within 15 minutes Tony arrived in the van – great! we thought, until Tony got out and immediately lifted up the bonnet, and told us about the green radiator liquid he’d just left on the M25!!!! We found the hole in the radiator from which the fluid had leaked, and with our vehicle repair knowledge between the four of us still equalling about 0, we plugged the hole (thanks Dad for the tools!) and then gave the van a test drive to the motorway. It ran ok, but on a closure look under the bonnet, we know found what was meant to go in the hole – a tube! Previously we’d thought a cap had got loose and come off, but now realising we were stopping the flow of radiator fluid, we started to get concerned about carrying on…. At this point, Sue from next door came out and announced she’s a member of the AA, so she’d give them a call, pretending she was travelling with us! It was about 5.45pm by this point, with our ferry crossing booked for 6.30pm, and the AA said they may not be with us til 8! Should we risk it and drive anyway? None of us were sure, but we were getting pretty tempted to do so. Luckily the AA man turned up at 6.15pm and took one look and said we needed a complete new radiator!! Officially, we should not drive the van. Unofficially, we could drive the van for about 20 minutes and then we’d risk blowing up the entire engine!!! At this point we were all very glad we had not decided to chance driving to Dover, because we’d probably be broken down on the hard shoulder of the M25!!!
Being early evening on Saturday, and a bank holiday weekend, we’d not even be able to phone a garage before Tuesday morning, at which point we were all supposed to be happily settled into our new regions…. So we checked with the boss and he agreed to pay £250 to get the van towed to Dover!! So we finally made the ferry at 11pm, only needing the van to move a few hundred metres to get onto it! Once on the other side, we had a nervous 10 minute drive off the boat and to a motel, and we finally collapsed into bed at 2am!
Sunday 1st May
Sunday morning we abandoned the van at a local Citroen garage, along with a note in our bestest French that it needed fixing and we’d phone to explain and pay!! Then another one of the minibuses came and picked us and all our gear up, and we were again on our way! Today’s destination was Chamonix, French Alps (not actually that far from La Plagne!!) Headwater is part of the Thompson and Crystal group, so the vans we needed to pick up were kept in Chamonix! We made it by 6pm – a much easier journey!! And then finally, Sunday morning, Gerwyn and I got our van, and at about 10.30am left the others to head for our new home in the Loire!!
Monday 2nd May, 6pm
At last we arrived, and to a lovely little (well, quite big really) gite. Downstairs we’ve got a kitchen, dining room, lounge and toilet, and then upstairs 2 bedrooms, toilet and large bathroom. We’ve got a double garage where all our bikes are stored, and plenty of space on the driveway to park the van, and work on bikes. The gite is interestingly decorated with a variety (i.e. non-matching) of flowery wall paper, tiled floors, and coverings (e.g. throws over the sofas and protective plastic covers over table tops, sideboard tops which are all wooden). It takes some time for your eyes to get used to all of this, and despite repeated warnings about the décor from experienced Headwater staff, nothing quite prepares you for the real thing!!
Our time “pre-guests” was spent finding hotels and looking round them, checking out the best routes between hotels, checking route notes for ease of use, and accuracy, and just seemingly endless tasks, that just when you thought you were getting things in hand, you remembered something else you needed to do!! We had a few challenges along the way: 1 hotel that changed hands over the winter, with no sign of life from the new owners, and therefore had to be scrapped – so we are using another hotel (already used by Headwater), but this meant we had to update route notes quite significantly, as the 2 hotels are about 15km apart!! Similary with a restaurant being used on a Sunday night when a hotel restaurant is closed: the restaurant went bust 6 weeks ago, and no-one in Montlouis opens on a Sunday night! We eventually found a superb restaurant in Vouvray (as in the very nice wine!)… And then there was one section of a cycling route which is now being rudely interrupted by the construction of a new motorway!!! We didn’t think the guests would want to cycle through that, so again, a new route needed to be planned and written! It’s a good job we’re seasoned seasonnaires, and not phased by this sort of thing!!
Thursday 5th May
Tony Blair won the election
Sunday 8th May 2005
Then came the occasion of Sunday 8th May 2005 – my big 3-0!! We wanted to make it as non-work like as possible, so decided to test the walking route – but on bikes, so that we could complete all 3 stages in one day. Gerwyn had added up the km’s and reckoned 43…. About half way through he realised he’d added up wrong, and it was going to be more like 55km! Luckily, it was a sunny day, and it started well – however as time wore on, we came across parts of the route notes that weren’t very clear, and were mainly cycling on very bumpy tracks (that of course would be fine on foot!) and after a few detours, we eventually got home, after 8 hours on the bikes, and the best part of 60kms covered!! I should add at this point, that only a few kms from home, I still managed to get a wolf whistle from some blokes in a passing car – very satisfying under the circumstances!!!
We’d have been happy to collapse into bed at this point, but instead had a dinner date at the new restaurant we needed to “test” for Sunday nights – and it was superb!! We were wined and dined, and slightly spoilt by the owners, who of course wanted to make a good impression with the prospect of regular customers!
The next day, my thighs and back-side ached rather a lot, but hell, I’m 30 now and still managed to do all that!! Gerwyn bought us a ride in a hot air balloon too, but unfortunately it was too windy on Monday to go, and we are still waiting for another good slot in the weather that fits in with our work schedule…but we’ve got all summer, so will get to fly at some point!
Wednesday 11th May
Our first guests arrived on Wednesday 11th – and were journalists!! Actually, they’ve been no trouble at all, nor have any of our guests so far. It’s quite different to the ski season: we meet them on day 1, sometimes collecting them from the station, then brief them and that’s it; they do the tour on their own, and then we seem them on the last day. As people can arrive every other day, we soon get to see lots of faces. Occasionally we bump into them at a hotel, or out on their bikes if we pass them when moving bags between hotels. We spend a fair bit of time driving about – but the roads are relatively quiet. We are getting the hang of preparing bikes too – luckily for us they are all properly serviced during the winter, but then stacked up for storage, so for starters we check them and do a few tweaks and give them a clean – there may be a bit more maintenance to do once they’ve been ridden!
Now that guests are here, and the “set-up” work is done, we are starting to get some free time – sometimes just an hour or 2 between jobs, other times a free morning if there are no arrivals or pick ups… Katy sent me out some good little cookery books for my birthday, and I’ve been making good use of those already. It’s actually really nice to experiment with a bit of cooking, and get some well needed practice in before the ski season!
Gerwyn has been preparing me for the imminent release of Star Wars III, by watching the others on DVD! However, he has now just discovered that even Tours cinema isn’t going to show it in English, so I’m not sure how far we are going to have to travel to watch it! Personally, I’d give the French version ago, but Gerwyn won’t understand much at all, and being a true Star Wars fan, that just won’t do….!!!!
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