Autumn disappeared and winter well and truly set it. Frost outside. Dark at 3:30pm. Freezing temperatures, long woolly coats on the tube, scarves and beanies. And even some signs of snow.
And of course in this hemisphere, with winter comes Christmas.
To get into the spirit of things I even bought a real pine Christmas tree, although the lack of having a car meant I had to get the 2m tree home on a couple of buses, which raised some interesting looks from fellow passengers.
At my house we had a "family Christmas" amongst all our "orphan" Aussie friends and it was good to have people to celebrate with so far from home.
Then on the Friday before Christmas I left work early and met my friend Sue at the Victoria bus station, where we boarded a coach for France. It would be a long bus ride. Once we got to the English Channel we were faced with a long wait for a space for our bus on the Channel Tunnel train; and 7 hours into the bus ride we hadn't even hit France yet. The bus ride was cramped, cold, boring and above all, long. But knowing that soon we'd be jumping around in fresh snow kept our spirits high. 20 hours into the trip we finally arrived in Flaine, a village in the Grand Massif ski area of the Alps, near the French-Swiss border.
Sue and I literally hit the snow covered ground running. It was Saturday afternoon and we wouldn't get our skis until the next morning, so we entertained ourselves in the freshly fallen snow by jumping onto it and sliding down the hills on our bottoms, whilst other members of our group caught up on sleep.
Our accommodation was the UCPA. Kind of sounds like YMCA. It is a French non-profit organisation providing affordable outdoor adventures for everyone. It was a big building which gave us somewhere nice to sleep, eat, drink and hire skis. We got out skis on the Sunday and the next seven days were spent skiing, eating and drinking and sleeping. Flaine is a pretty small village so the après ski nightlife wasn't huge, but staying in such a big centre meant that there was always some sort of entertainment.
Our package included 5 half day lessons, which was great for me as I hadn't had a lesson since I was about 19 or 20 and my skiing since has been self taught and although I could get myself down a mountain, it wasn't pretty.
We were well above the level of clouds all week, which meant it was sunny all along. And it didn't matter much that we didn't have fresh snow, as it had dumped big time just before we had arrived. At times, it felt like summer compared to London.
Christmas eve was spent having a nice Christmas dinner put on by the UCPA, and I didn't miss home that much, because being in a ski resort didn't feel like Christmas much at all.
On Christmas day, Sue and I got up and caught the main gondola to the peak of the mountain, and exchanged presents sitting on some rocks on the snow, as we enjoyed views of Mont Blanc and the snowy mountain ranges surrounding us.
This trip was the first time I had ever skied 7 days in a row, and it was the first time I had ever left satisfied, feeling like I had had enough.
The trip back was thankfully only 16 hours long and our coach arrived in London at 6am on Sunday. A bit of a sleep and a Sunday afternoon to recover and I was ready for work on Monday. It was a short week as new years was in the middle. New years eve was at a masquerade party in a Clapham nightclub.
At around this time the winter started getting really cold. A weekend trip to Amsterdam didn't really escape the winter but it was good fun. It was for a mate’s 30th and was a good fun boys’ weekend!
Upon return to London it wasn’t long until it got to the coldest part of winter and it really was cold! London got its coldest snap in 20 years, whilst Melbourne recorded its highest ever temperature (46C). In London it snowed. One Monday most of London was shut down because of the foot of snow on the ground. No buses ran, most tubes stopped and many got a day off work.
As the snow was still frozen solid on the ground, a friend I met in Montreal came to visit London whilst studying in Finland. She came and stayed for a week, but sightseeing was made difficult, sliding on the ice. Nevertheless it was a good opportunity to be a tourist in London, and do a whole bunch of sightseeing. Also ventured out of London on a day trip to Hampton Court Palace (one of the homes of Henry VIII, after he took it from the Cardinal for not granting him a divorce), Stonehenge and Oxford all in one day. It was great to finally see Stonehenge – especially given the area was still covered with snow. The thing wasn’t as big as I had thought and a lot more dilapidated than expected, but you can easily cast your mind back to when it was built and see why it is a wonder of the world.
