Les Gets ('Luh Jey')

I'm in the Alps and it is insane!!! Where to begin?? Let’s go slow day by day. As if you're snowboarding for the first time in years.

I flew out from Gatwick on Thursday 30^th November to Geneva, Switzerland. I travelled with 2 others, Katie who is the Childcare Supervisor and Will the Resort Host for Les Bruyeres resort. I am the Resort Host for Reberty 2000, and all of us will be in an area called Les Meniures in the famous Three Valleys – the largest ski area in the world.

We’re not there yet though.  We’ve been staying in Les Gets, Ski Famille’s first and largest location. For the first night when it was just us and the managers we stayed in Chalet Bacall, but since then we’ve been living in Hotel Chamoise with the rest of the Chalet Host team. I’m sharing a room with my honest soul sister, Clare, from Scootland! I’ll have to find a way to record her saying “Okie dokie” because it’s the best thing I’ve ever heard!!! Clare’s very positive, and after an series of inspirational seminars about being your best self and making the most out of your time we’ve had deep hippie heart to hearts about life the universe and everything.

Anyway, getting off piste, the first day Katie, Will and I were doing our minibus training. There were stupid amounts of snow in Les Gets when we arrived. Nothing at all at the airport, until we started heading up the mountain, and then it was just incredible. So in our training we really got to drive up snowy mountain hairpin bends surrounded by locals doing handbrake turns around corners.

I spent 3 or 4 days in Chalet Bacall doing host training with the rest of the Chalet Staff. The chefs were practicing too so I got to enjoy the whole menu – and here I’m talking breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and a 6 course dinner! We practiced welcome speeches and serving each other and started to get a hang on how things will roll. I also went back to the airport to check out where everything is, the different offices, and even got a backstage tour (felt like a celebrity! or someone on those dodgy airline tv shows) so I think I’m all set for when I pick up the guests. Hot tub training was a good one. Not. Quite a rude woman who didn’t seem to quite know what she was talking about and didn't like it when we tried to make it fun…

We also had teambuilding activities and games – but of course most of the fun stuff happened when I was busy doing other training. I missed the bum boarding and wine tasting, but I did get to join the Winter Olympics where I represented Germany; Seb would be so proud!

The best day by far was today. It was the first day off, and we decided to make the most of it. The snow had melted over the week, but yesterday it came down hard, so the chairlifts were opened for the weekend. As part of my job I get a snowboard and a lift pass included for the whole season, but as the season hasn’t actually started the lifts haven’t opened and besides I’m not in my resort yet. But I figured it was about time to get up close and personal with the mountain so I hired a board and Clare and I brought lift passes. 

There’d been big plans yesterday that loads of people would be ready to go to the ski shop at 9:30 when it opened. But the two of us were the only ones who actually made it to breakfast!

Last night we all had a few drinks. We went to a couple of the local bars, including Bowling Bar which no word of a lie has a bowling alley beside the bar! It was a great night but while we were sensible and left about midnight after a couple of drinks we forgot that the majority of people here are either a) 18 and just here for drinking or b) just here for drinking.

So we had the slopes to ourselves. It was the biggest adrenaline rush I’ve had in so long. I think it’s been about 8 or 9 years since I last snowboarded and I wasn’t sure how it was going to go. We said we’d do it slowly together, but when I turned around on the button lift I saw Clare disappearing at the bottom of the slope having failed to figure it out – to be fair we should have started on a simple chairlift… I ended up at the top of the mountain by myself with the knowledge that I had to somehow get myself down…

But it’s like riding a bike.

# destroyed

Back to Adventure

Welcome back! It's been a long, slow summer which has actually flown by. Not much to report from my time. I worked hundred hour weeks in the Watch House Cafe and didn't do much else. Actually that's a lie; in my (very little) free time I helped to build a bouldering centre and got back into climbing, and I took up gig rowing out on the ocean - even got invited to join the racing squad!

The build in process.

The finished place, Rockburn

Rowing out along the Jurrasic Coast.

I won't be joining the racing squad just yet because I've gone and done it again...

I've got a job in the Alps working as a Resort Host for a ski resort!!

I will be working at a resort called Reberty 2000 in Les Trois Vallees - or The Three Valleys to us English speakers. So called '2000' because it is 2000m above sea level with 180 ski lifts taking you to a top height of 3230m over 600km of slopes. So quite a big area =] One of the biggest in the world in fact.

I'll be working for British based company Ski Famille who specialise in holidays for families with young children. There's a big childcare team as well as ski school so the kids are looked after while mum and dad hit the slopes.

Check out their website at Ski Famille to find out about them and see some incredible pictures.

Did I mention the chalets yet? Huge, gorgeous wooden cabin style chalets sleeping between 11 and 17 guests. With their own team of chalet and childcare staff they also have their own chef! Not to mention the en suites, spas, hot tubs, sauna and heated boot rooms… All located in a resort village where you can ski off the slopes and up to the front door.

My job will be to meet and return guests to the airport, arrange ski hire, lift passes, ski school, settle them into their chalets and make sure everything runs fluidly throughout the week. And shovelling snow, taking kids to ski school, dressing up as the company mascot Monty the Marmot (and probably an elf over Christmas), and  running to the store to pick up potatoes (apparently they always run out of potatoes!). I'm the go-to girl if anything needs doing, and the jump in if anyone is sick/injured etc.

And it goes without saying that I'll be testing out all 600km of slopes, the 4km toboggan run, Speed Mountain the longest luge in the Alps, the race courses, the air pillows in the fun parks and maybe even the pool in the village…

It's going to be a bit different from my last two winters spent on the beach in Australia!

Tune in to see how it all goes. And to see some photos to make you very jealous, I know you all like to see them =]

2 years later (from the beginning, not the last post)

This month marks 2 years since I set out for America and started my travels. So it's finally time to wrap this up and get on with a normal life. For now at least.

Bunny and I left Australia at the beginning of April and with a stopover in Singapore made it back to Heathrow the day before I had left. I can't describe how amazing it was to see my family, my dad especially, I'd missed him so much while I'd been away. 

I spent a few weeks in the Midlands, catching up with old friends and family. And sleeping. Lots of sleeping. It was very strange to have a proper bed again after months sleeping on an inflatable mat in a tent! To have my own space again completely threw me, it was so quiet! 

My wonderful grand poppa who turned 98 while I was away.

I was back just in time to help my big brother and his beautiful girlfriend move into their first house. I helped them move into their last place in Battersea so it was only right that I do the shuffle of goods down to Reading too. It's quite incredible that they have brought a house!! The biggest thing I owned was an inflatable sleeping mat!

And then because I had so much fun moving them, I helped move mom too. Since I left the country she painted my room, got a lodger, sold my car, quit her job, re-homed our cats, sold her house, went off to work in portugal, brought a new house, pulled it apart and put it back together again. 

We drove to the storage lockup in Leicester and piled everything into a rented van for a long drive south to Bradpole in Dorset, just on the edge of Bridport.

We plonked everything into a house with no floors, no curtains (we're still using the lovely floral ones from the old lady who lived there before), no shower and no furniture as most of it had been sold at the last home. We've had carpets put in, the shower works now (mostly), we've painted the walls, spent HOURS building badly instructed flat-pack furniture, had a sofa delivered, and basically put the place together bit by bit. 

Living in Dorset is stunningly beautiful. We're just a 10 minute drive to the sea. Unfortunately there's no waves, but i'm hopeful for spots round the coast. If you've seen Broadchurch, a hit BBC series with David Tennant and Oliva Coleman, you'll be able to see exactly where I live now. 

It's a stunning place, but it's very isolated. Without a car I can't really get around. I brought a bike so I can get further than on foot, but heading back up to the Midlands isn't easy. 

After a while more of sleeping I decided it was time to get a proper job.

So I found The Watch House, a cafe on the beachfront in West Bay.

It's mostly locally caught seafood, as well as wood-fired pizzas and a disgustingly large range of delicious looking cakes, made in our own bakery. In my first month I was promoted to supervisor, so now I'm in charge of things like ordering supplies and cashing up. I also get to tell people what to do, and they actually listen (!), sometimes. There's some great people working there and we have a lot of fun. I'm learning a lot. Ask me to make you a double shot skinny macchiato and I'll see you right =] 

It's a great place to be with a great vibe, so for now I'm pretty happy and feeling all at peace. 

If I could just stop those itchy feet….

4,288km later

Well, we did it. We travelled from Adelaide, in South Australia, all the way along the coast into Western Australia and to Perth.

Firstly, Sebastian brought the car. Or should I say the Monster Truck. It's a Nissan Patrol, with a lot of extra hustle; the biggest tyres you can get, a 4inch lift, 2 extra tyres on the back, and is setup with draws and a fridge that slides out in the back. It is a BEAST! You climb in and feel the world fall away beneath you, towering over people in normal cars.

Bad news was that we didn't manage to sell the Pathfinder in Adelaide before we had to leave. We were on a short time scale as Masa had to be in Perth to see a friend before visiting family on the Gold Coast and then flying back home at the end of March. So we ended up travelling in both cars. Which meant a lot more driving for both of us as we weren't able to share it, and a lot more money spent on fuel! Fuel stations do not exist in the middle of the wilderness we drove through, and those that did were around 50-60cents more per litre than inner city.

I'm warning you now, the South and West coasts are SO gorgeous. So I took a lot of pictures. I've managed to narrow it down to just a few of the best for you, but there's still a lot, because let's face it, 4,000km is a long way!

So the first exciting thing that happened was Sebastian's first beach drive. It was going great for a while, until "I want to try driving on those sand dunes". You'll never guess what happened next...

Yep, bogged it. 3 attempts to get out ourselves failed, so as it got darker we went for help. It took 9 other people to help us dig it out and push it back to harder sand. Not embarrassing at all!

Next thing that happened was this. (that's a mechanic). 

There is a leak in the gearbox, and explorations say it's most likely the top seal, so the whole gear box will need to be taken out and resealed, but the mechanic told us that if we keep pumping oil into it, it will get us to Perth.

And then this happened. (that's a different mechanic) (and a different problem).

The carburettor shook itself loose. So it needed a new one. Which needed ordering. And then fitting…

So while we waited we went a found a giant shark.

Finally back on the road we found purple salt lakes and a road separating them from the ocean.

And we found a cave. Or a sinkhole. Or just some giant footprint in the ground.

We slept in the tent - sideways on the mattress to fit all three of us on it. And every morning we woke up to sunshine and a beautiful view.

We found so many beautiful spots.

We crossed the Nullarbor Plain - a vast endless road of nothing for miles and miles - sorry I'm in Australia, for kms and kms!

Followed a side road which took us to the edge of a cliff.

It was a bit windy!

We found the thirteenth apostle.

And Seb had chance to play off-roading with his new car.

I was reborn as a baby kangaroo...

And we finally crossed the border into Western Australia

Where it became even more rural

At the end of the Nullabor we were greeted with a longer long straight road

And still Seb was under the car every morning to put another litre of oil in the gear box.

Found an old mine

Seb discovered he could walk on water

And we wanted to know what it would be like to be birds...

I found some great places to do some yoga

It was white sand beaches galore

The second beach driving attempt went much more smoothly!

And finally Masa and I found a tree to climb...

It was 'only' 52m, the smallest of the 3 in the area. There are metal poles sticking out to make a spiral staircase, and a thin wire mesh to create a sort of tunnel. But it's not enough to catch you if you fell. There's no harness, no people around… You wouldn't find that in England!

Then finally, 200km from Perth, tragedy struck. Sebastian pulled over on the freeway after the Patrol had stopped steering. Roadside recovery found that the front right bearings had broken and the swivel hubs had shattered. The car was immovable. So the tow truck comes along as we pile everything from the Patrol into the Pathfinder, and takes the car to a garage in Bussleton, about 30km away. The Pathy had been sat with the hazard lights on, and when we tried to start her up the battery was flat. So Mr Tow Man turned around, gave us a jump start and we drove off to find a quiet spot in the forest to pitch our tent for the night, revving the car a lot before turning the engine off, praying it would start in the morning.

It did start, and we managed to drive to Perth and drop off Masa with his friend. 

So 2 weeks and 4,288km further down the road it was time to say goodbye to Masa, split and go our own ways.