Geoff writes: Today is the day before we open the conference for reading, so we went skiing. First, we stopped to pick up my skis from their fourth repair, but they hadn’t been done, so they lent me a pair for the day, and promised to get mine fixed. So then we decided to go to Nuria to ski – the train station, the Cremallera (zip) rack and pinion train is just opposite the shop. Nuria is the miniature, Legoland resort we’ve not skied at before. Just under 7km. The ride up on the train was quite spectacular. The skiing was ok, but hard to spend a whole day there. I’m not sure why people would buy a season ticket for it, when there are much better resorts close by (we got a free one day pass, including the Cremallera, with our Masella season ticket). But it was fun for one day.

Apart from a couple of greens, there is just one ski lift taking you to a few runs of varying grades. All very short! Judith, for the first time for a year, managed to fall over after hitting some ice; then later on got told off by the guy at the bottom of the lift for skiing too fast, and not slowing down when getting close to the lift. That put her in her place….

We decided to catch the train back around 4.00pm, hoping to get the seat right at the front, with a panoramic view through the window. As the train came in, and we were walking towards it, a huge horde of kids came out of the waiting room, and trampled us in the rush to the train. Fortunately, Judith was able to use her ski poles to good effect, and did manage to get the front seat, pushing the kids out of the way. No use being tall if you can’t use the height. On the other hand, that meant there were far too many kids behind us in the train, all competing to shout the loudest – mostly screaming “uau!” (that’s Catalan for “wow”). They weren’t exclaiming at the scenery – they just wanted to make a lot of noise. Their teachers tried to shut them up, but failed miserably.

Back at Ribes, and back at the ski shop, they’ve fixed them again. They offered us a full refund, but we refused it. They’re nice people. However, next time we go skiing, we will borrow a spare pair from them just in case….

A fun day out. But we won’t bother skiing at Nuria again. Work tonight, in preparation for tomorrow.

See photos of today.

P.S. And here’s what the lads got up to while we were skiing… Johnny’s video.

No comments yet - please add one »