Ski de fond

Temperature sitting just on zero today: a comparatively warm day by recent standards, and perfect for a spot of cross-country skiing.

Ski de fond, we in France call it. I like to think that today I resembled the chap in red 2 or 3 photos into the link: only, whereas his name is probably Pirmin Zubriggen or some such, and he is in perfect control of what he is doing, in my case (a) my jeans were tucked into my socks, creating a rather fetching sartorial effect, and (b) the raised leg was less a sign of control than it was of panic as the edge of the mountain loomed ...

So, we piled into 2 cars and headed up to Charman Som (right). When I say we 'headed up', I mean that the point we stopped at was fully 6 kms beneath the summit, up to which we skied. I have never skied before, ever, but my understanding was that ski de fond, classically, involves skiing over relatively flat surfaces, albeit for quite long distances. All G. However, my brother-in-law, Thierry, and my sister-in-law, Leo, are clearly of the 'throw the buggers in the deep end and see if they can swim' school, because today's route was 6 kms straight up the mountain - and 6 kms straight down.

The going up bit was relatively ok. Enjoyable, even, although I was concentrating so hard on the ends of my skis - which seem to go on forever and which are ridiculously skinny - that I had to be reminded to look at the view from time to time. And the view, especially from the top, was staggering. The mountain is 1867 metres high, and affords the most extraordinary views of the surrounding ranges. (I knicked these photos from an online site, having forgotten to take my own camera; given the manner in which I descended the mountain, that turned out to be rather a good thing for the camera.) Seeing 6 or 7 chamois en route was an added bonus.

It was all going so well until it was time to go home. The going down bit was definitely NOT ok. In general terms I am perfectly happy to make a bit of a dick of myself in public - but on that particular front, today was an absolute tour de force. When you have no experience of these things, heading down an icy mountain on long skinny things is really hard and incredibly demanding. It's possible I would have made the return trip more quickly had I simply sat on my arse and skidded down, but that would have been even less dignified than what actually occurred, which was that I hung onto a couple of poles that Leo and Thierry held between them, and we sort of scooted down (at what seemed to me to be warp speed) together. Apart from the bit when Thierry stood behind me and attempted to guide me down - I thought that part was going splendidly until I misinterpreted his command to 'stand up, for God's sake - you're about to crash us!' as an instruction to 'drop your weight over your skis and go hard', and we promptly took off at a great rate of knots into the nearest snow bank. Leo had to have a wee sit down to stop laughing ...

But we got there. Eventually. It was fantastic - I'll definitely be heading back for more as soon as possible ...