Sunshine in the Arlberg

It is now the end of the afternoon on Thursday 12th February and since Tuesday morning it has been sunshine all of the way. The snow is brilliant and with the excellent visibility, skiing has been wonderful for the past 3 days; and we are promised more sunshine tomorrow. At times the sun has been ferocious and sunshield has definitely been required. As I hope you can see from the photos below, the sky has been a brilliant blue.

Yesterday we explored a new skiing area which has been made accessible from Lech since the last time we visited. A new Gondola goes horizontally across the valley from the bottom of the Weibermahd lift to Saloberkopf and then on down to Warth. We had been warned that the runs to Warth were all in the shade so we stayed on the sunny side facing Lech and the skiing was excellent.
 

 

 

I must report that the loss of weight by Ray last year has made a big difference to skiing; sadly not improving the technique but definitely resulting in less knee pain.

 

As always now we hire helmets along with our skis and I would guess that 95%+ of skiiers now wear helmets. An innovation this year is that the hire companies are providing rather fetching hair nets to wear under the helmets. I'm aiming for a photo of the LLW with her Ena Sharples look but so far she has carefully avoided this - watch this space!

Skiing in Lech

On Saturday 7th February we rose at the unearthly hour of 3 am to catch our flight to Zurich and then on to Lech by coach. Sleep was hard to come by on Friday evening particularly after the buzz of watching England beat Wales at Cardiff.

However, the journey went like clockwork and again easyJet proved reliable, hassle free and very comfortable. I never thought I would become a fan of easyJet's but their improvement in the past couple of years has been dramatic.

We arrived in Lech about 1pm and throughout the coach trip from Zurich we had seen plenty of snow everywhere, so we were not surprised to see metres of the stuff in Lech. We are staying at the Hotel Monzabon which is the hotel we visited on our first holiday in Lech. We were greeted with the usual warm and genuine Austrian welcome and the hotel owner picked us up from the bus station.

Sunday morning dawned cloudy and snowy but off we went to enjoy an excellent mornings skiing. However, shortly after lunchtime the visibility deteriorated seriously and we decide to retire for the day. Monday was very similar but we skiied really quite well until the typical second day tiredness set in. We were having a snack in one of the hotels restaurants, which has a view of the Ice Rink, when the waiter informed us that Princess Caroline of Monacco was on the rink with her daughter (who appeared to be a top class skater).

Sure enough there they were complete with minder and it transpired that they had made a special trip to see the renowned LLW! We later discovered that the daughter was 15 year old Princess Alexandra Charlotte Ulrike Maryam Virginia of Hanover (phew!!) who had been competing in the youth Winter Olympics held in Austria

The same waiter then told us that Princess Diana had visited several times in the early nineties with William and Harry and that then Harry was very reckless!

From tomorrow we are promised sunshine all week and are very much looking forward to better visibility and exploring the new gondola link across the valley to another extensive ski area at Warth.

Saturday 3rd January

After 3 very pleasant days in the Lake District with Hilton and Ann we arrived at HPB Buckland Court just outside Broadway for a week's walking and relaxation. in the Cotswolds. The weather was pretty good for January and we thoroughly enjoyed the walks although they were all hard work because the ground was so waterlogged.

We visited the RSC in Stratford to see Love's Labour's Lost which as usual from the RSC was excellent. Overall a very good week and our apartment, The Nest was great.