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.

Red Kites and Roald Dahl: Bucks for books

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. This post takes a look at Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire one-time home of Roald Dahl.  Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).

Delicious drinks from Cafe Twit. Just add fizz and ice cream.

The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre is billed as a perfect day out for six to 12 year olds.  I left it years too late and ended up at the converted coaching inn - excitingly entered via a courtyard enclosed by Willy Wonka's gates from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - with two 15 year olds and a 12 year old. Of course they weren't the oldest visitors, as there are plenty of adults there. The exhibition is surprisingly cerebral - lots of words and letters to look at. The games are all about how you can be a writer - even the entry fee gets kids an adorable My Story Ideas Book and a pencil to use as they discover more about Dahl's life and wicked humour. It's a very different experience to the breathtaking Potterworld experience one country away which goes for shock and awe as you meet the film sets.
But Roald Dahl is a wonderful children's writer and creations like Matilda, and the dream-catching BFG have already stood the test of time. At the museum kids are given permission to explore their imaginations so they can travel anywhere, and then write about it. All aided with crazy food and drink concoctions served up at Cafe Twit.

Great Missenden is far smaller than I expected, yet has a wonderful array of shops (bizarrely almost all  but the sweet shop, Co-op and train cafe shut on Sundays - is there some kind of country rule about Sunday activities?). It also boasts spots that could be familiar to Dahl's fans - the library which Matilda visited while her mum went to bingo. The petrol pumps from Danny the Champion of the World (not read this yet) and the "n-orphanage" from which Sophie was stolen by the BFG.

Revisiting stories I read with my kids wasn't the only thing that gave me flashbacks. From 1975-80 I went to a boarding school in Buckinghamshire, an experience I would only wish on enemies - and certainly not children. It was such a painful experience that even now I try to avoid Buckinghamshire. But still as the train reached Amersham and the views opened up I felt that sinking go-back-to-school heart ache return.  This must seem silly as the county is a looker: studded with beautiful beech woods, once well-managed for chair making.  It also takes in a chunk of classic English chalk downland known as The Chilterns which stretches into neighbouring Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Oxfordshire.

Marie, Nell and Lola pose while the red kites
swoop out of the picture.

Lola swings, with Marie and Nell in the beech woods.

The area around Great Missenden is also renowned for the successful re-release of the once common Red Kite (a bird once so prolific it's geographical range stretched from Finland to Gambia). After our tour of the museum we took an hour-long exploration through hay meadows and woodlands (a trail provided by the Dahl museum), during which the kids spotted two Red Kites hovering - easy as they have a distinctive V shaped tail. "It's so close you can see the colours," said Lola in some awe when she saw the first. 

Back in the Roald Dahl museum we had another look at the hut where Dahl cocooned himself for morning and afternoon writing sessions. It certainly offered sharper insight into the writer's mind. Dahl loved coffee and chocolate as he wrote (I do too!). Beside the now-dead writer's chair is a desk where sits shavings of his spine (to ease an old injury caused by a plane crash, see his life story in Boy), his hip joint and an equally round ball made from Kit-Kat wrappers. Each equally gruesome, all shouting for their fascinating story to be told...  

We didn't quite travel the world on this trip, but it left us all thinking about how to describe our worlds better. Definitely an inspiring way to start the holidays.