Andy's Blog - Gone Further

Not the best of times to go 15 days without doing a Blog, so I’ll try to keep it brief.

I left you on Sunday 14th anticipating a good week, later that night we ran into Hugo from Meribel 1999 fame who was in town for the week with his friend, Martin Jol (ish). This was an unexpected bonus as we were just about getting sick of the sight of each other so a couple of friendly faces went a long way. We were also looking forward to the arrival of our first guest to Chalet BOTT, Sundown Easty.

So we came to Tuesday. Easty was arriving at around 11.00pm (after much Easyjet sadness) but we weren’t going to sit around and wait for him when it was TC’s Bar Night of 1000 shots which was bigged up as one of the top early season nights in the resort. We arrived at around 9.00pm when there were around 20 shots crossed off and it was the nice €1 shots such as ‘Lemon & Lime’, ‘Minty Fresh’ etc that were being necked. We quickly passed the 500 mark and it was time for Stuoobs & I to go and meet Easty at the bus stop. We returned within an hour and by this time we were on the more bizarre (and strangly more exoensive) shots of ‘Vegemite’, ‘Sarsons’ and ‘Onion Gravy’ (made with real onions and bits of beef that ended up on Cazzie’s chin). We did the thousand and I was already feeling my hangover for the following morning.

I made it out of bed and was relatively quiet, we had arranged to all meet each other at the bottom of the Parlafour at 10am the following morning so I went kitted up in my gear with board and ran for the bus after the arrogant Frenchie refused to wait for me – he waits every morning but must have not recognised me in my boarding gear. We had a great day, thanks in part to the metre of snow that had fallen in the previous couple of days. We ended up following around Bristol University Ski Club who had taken over the resort; 600 of them were in town and were in teams working their way around the mountain where they had tasks to perform at each checkpoint. This picture was the one where they had to drink three shots of vodka, spin around a ski pole ten times and then ski down to the next checkpoint. Many of the group were beginners and they were absolutely smashed – it was an interesting day on the hill!

The next day was fun, aside from continuing to enjoy the belting snow conditions we had a cracking night out in the ever impressive Loop Bar where they had a brilliant live covers band, Vodka Cranberry on tap and were not shy about giving us lots of free shots. Martin Jol was INSISTANT that “Tomorrow will be a good day,” but a couple of hours in Jack’s Club sinking gin started to make that look unlikely. Total credit to Hugo for this brave act of pouring Dioralyte into his Vod Cran to try to keep going…

Despite our best efforts we all managed to get up and have a great day on the mountain, each day getting higher – I could look at pictures of us up the Mountain all day but here’s just one froM our trip to the top of the Grande Motte, 3456 metres above sea level…

That night was relatively quiet, we enjoyed a fondue and watched Die Hard for the second time in consecutive days (John McClane had plans). The next day, Saturday, was our last day before returning home – Stuoobs, Easty & I made our way to Val d’Isère for the day and I swapped the board for a pair of skis. We had an excellent day enjoying perfect on piste conditions yet still finding fresh powder a full week after the massive dump we had

If you are interested in all the pictures we’ve got then head for my Flickr collection through the link at the top of the page.

We then had to fly to England for Christmas, but not without a three hour delay in Geneva Airport. We now have a new policy One Hour Delay = One Litre of Duty Free Bailey’s. It was a fun flight.

We had Christmas and it was much like any other – thoroughly enjoyable and Gin fuelled. The only exception was the horrendous state Clarkey & Kim got themselves into Christmas night at my mum & dad’s!

We’re now back in Tignes and anticipating the arrival of The Don & Kev today in time for the massive outdoor New Year party with some dude called David Guetta – apparently he’s some huge DJ who’s down with the kids.

If my spelling is appalling then I apologise but I have finished this blog off on a French keyboard at the Radio Station.

It’s time to go but no blog can be complete without a picture of Pezza & Cazzie dicking about in the huge snowfall we had…

xxx

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