Ways to ski in UK snow

This blog is about low-carbon family travel. Will it or won't it snow this year? With  Facebook friends publishing endless pix of far away spots where the snow is falling (from Serbia to Sheffield) how do you guarantee kids can have a taste of  Christmas holiday snow when it's not snowing where you are? Here Nicola Baird tries out snow in a snow dome.

Did the picture on the side wall fool you? It's easy to imagine
you are in the mountains, not Hemel Hempstead.

It's not just snowy weather that inspired me to write this post - there's also this amazing TEDx (teen) talk from ski fan Logan LaPlante who talks about how to hack life (ie, make cool changes). Worth having a look at too... here http://youtu.be/h11u3vtcpaY

I love the way snow messes up the UK - as kids we all long for it. As commuters we loathe it. As a mum I worry most about school ski trips. I've never skiied but I'd love to do so - it's just fiendishly expensive. However if you can collect the money together (and lots of schools give you as much as 18 months warning before a ski trip) the school ski trip is the way to let your kids have a taster. Mine are going to France and Italy in 2015 - both via coach.

Kitted up.

Turns out there are even better ways that guarantee snow and don't involve sacrificing the February half term or part of the two week Easter holidays... getting a taster session at a snowdome. The Snow Centre at Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire has two slopes - one looks huge, the other is a teaching slope. The centre offers lots of opportunities to learn how to ski and snowboard. You can hire equipment and buy it too. There's even the option of toboggan parties! And it's open all year - so you can learn to ski in the summer (when it's not going to be so crowded) or you can learn in the winter knowing there will be snow in the dome.

Kids can start snow lessons incredibly young - there are plenty of two year olds with snowboards at the Snow Dome. But my daughters joined a holiday class for 12-16year olds. It's nice to see them both trying something new together again as for a while that hasn't been possible. It's £55 for a two day course (two hours on two consecutive days) for 4-6 year olds and £99 for 7-16 year olds. There are good discounts for members though.

Lola

The verdict: learning to ski in the UK is still an expensive treat but the beaming smile on the kids' faces as they gradually learnt how to plough and slalom down the slope (so far without poles) was wonderful to watch. My motto is definitely becoming if you can give people the chance to learn to do a new skill, then do it! It was fun to watch their progress through the huge windows lining the Snow Centre's roomy cafe too - all in all a perfect ski taster which made me feel I could just have easily been in Andorra, Finland, France, Germany, Slovenia, Austria, Switzerland... or any of those fab skiing mountain resorts.

Nell

Travel tips: Take the train to Hemel Hempstead. A taxi from the station to the Snow Centre takes less than 10 minutes for the two mile journey and costs around £6 (it would take about 40 minutes to walk). And don't forget that if you are going skiing in Europe you can book a train via voyages-sncf.com thus avoiding the hassle of a plane or long car journey.

The Alps are crowded... near Woolwich

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how to get that crowded Alpine feeling in a London meadow. This post is by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about books and blogs)   

I've written about walking the Capital Ring on a recent post, but on this weekend's bid to complete the 75-mile footpath the author Colin Saunders made me laugh with a photo captioned: "You could imagine yourself transported to the Alps as you approach the mountain hut at the top of Oxleas Meadow." 

I was looking forward to this, not least because it means I don't need to pop over to Beckton to climb the old waste spoil site from the gas works, better known as the Beckton Alps (for more good ideas about trips around London, low and high points see this interesting blog).

So when we did reach the famous view of the cafe - as you can see from my photo - it really did look like the Alps at its busiest as there were 150 walkers taking a breather at the top of Oxleas Meadows. In theory it's a good place to stop - one of the highest spots on the Capital Ring footpath boasting views over South-East London and away to the North Downs. It's just normally there aren't so many people here in kagouls and backpacks. We'd let the walkers surge in front of our modest group of four as I picked up a dog poo at the top of the wooded hill that winds down and then back up to the so-called mountain hut.

We thought we'd lost them. But even in "mountains" that are almost offering a Swiss/Italian/Austrian/Slovenian/Croatian/Bosnian/Servian/Montenegran view (see map below) this isn't easy...

I love walking, and I love everyone else walking - but crucially walkers aren't allowed to walk at the same time as me! This is a family failing: my dad was such a misanthropist that we only really went out on long walks when it was raining hard. I'll never forget the wet Sunday when this unluckily coincided with a sponsored walk (of hundreds of ramblers) heading in the other direction. How my Dad cursed them!



On this occasion I got so panicked by the crowds (fearing we might be associated with them) that I managed to fall into a muddy ditch, and lose the dog lead. I managed to find the lead but when I returned to where Nell had been guarding my rucksack was told that another dog had just come up and wee'ed over it. Lovely. And then somehow Nell's hot chocolate (fortunately cooling) got tipped over our dog...

No wonder my kids were laughing at the self-inflicted misfortunes caused by my fear of being made to step along with a crowd.

Over to you
Are there places you love but don't go to when the weather is good, simply because you too loathe the crowds, or change of atmosphere? Or is this just silly?