Foot in the crosshairs ……… fire!

All right, that’s enough of that having fun business.

Right, you lot. You can stop looking forward to that nice holiday you planned to spend showing friends round your favourite French ski resort. Don’t you realise that what you’re doing is horrifically dangerous? Really, how could you possibly imagine that you are in any way capable of pootling around a few blue runs and eating lunch in a convivial manner without killing yourself and everyone with you? God, you’re so irresponsible.

Or so last week’s court judgement in Albertville would have you believe. Following a case brought by the French authorities egged on by the ESF in Meribel, tour operator staff will no longer be allowed to ski about the pistes with their punters, on the grounds that it isn’t safe and they aren’t qualified to be responsible for said punters. Since there is no real difference between this and you showing your mates around, I think you should be worried.

This has been a long running and increasingly tedious argument led largely by the French national ski school, which seems to think people are going to pay for its instructors to ski around the resort, chat to them and eat lunch. Which clearly they are not, when all they want is an animated piste map, preferably with the odd social skill as a bonus.

It’s presumably because this argument is so blatantly fallacious that they’ve started going on about safety instead, though as far as I can see they have completely failed to demonstrate that a load of overweight British holidaymakers cruising around the marked runs with someone wearing a jacket with a logo on it is any more or less dangerous than me spending the afternoon sliding about with three barely intermediate friends on their annual half term break.

In fact, if we’re going to insist that anyone who ever skis with anyone else has a certificate which says that they once did a slalom course to near-olympic standard when they were 17, the Compagnie des Alpes needs to start looking at developing marmot sanctuaries, because running ski resorts is going to be a non-starter as a business model.

Dangerous criminal. Do not aproach this man.

Fortunately for general common sense I predict that the whole ski hosting/social skiing/whatever we’re calling it this week will carry on as usual, since even in totalitarian France nobody has the power to stop persons A B and C inviting person D to ski with them even if person D does happen to work for the company with which they are on holiday. Person D is entirely at liberty to ski with whomsoever he pleases in his free time in the middle of the day and he clearly isn’t wearing the company’s uniform, so piss off. The fact that it has been made clear to him on training that he is expected to ski with his guests three times a week is something which is never likely to come to anybody’s notice. Which brings us right back to the position we were all in when I did my first season back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and we were all wearing tight pants and Nevica jackets.

In the meantime though, there is bound to be a bit of fallout, during which various people will be inconvenienced while various others take advantage.

The losers ….

The ESF, which will lose whatever private lesson business the ski hosts used to put their way, since part of the host’s role was always to say (in the nicest possible way, obviously), “your skiing’s rubbish mate, get a lesson”.

The ESF, as every tour op which has the option scrambles to recommend any other ski school they can find just because they’re feeling narked by the whole situation.

The ESF, which is quite likely to find itself with rather fewer English customers as people vote with their feet and either holiday elsewhere or just book with different ski schools.

French resorts, which stand to lose business to countries where you can ski with whoever you like. We should bear in mind that this doesn’t just affect UK tour ops – the Belgians, Dutch, Scandis and eastern Europeans provide just the same service to their guests. That pretty much accounts for all of our non-French visitors here.

… or alternatively find some other school altogether.

And the winners are ….

Resorts outside France, which will score for some more punters as those people for whom the ski hosting days are an important part of the holiday opt for Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Andorra, North America, Bulgaria ……… etc. It’s entirely possible that TOs could consider either pulling out of French resorts altogether or at least significantly reducing their presence here. It’s not like France has a monopoly on wintersports is it?

The ESF in Meribel, which has rather bafflingly been awarded something in the region of 20,000€ for ‘loss of earnings’. Though in view of losers one to three above, this could be regarded as something of a Pyrrhic victory.

A bunch of lawyers, since it seems likely that the case will go from appeal in France to further appeal in Brussels or Strasbourg or wherever they do these things.

So that was a really worthwhile exercise then. Well done Les Pulls Rouges, way to convince everyone they’re going to love skiing in France.

Ski gear for the worried well

I’m this important, me, honestly.

I’m not sure what I’ve done to deserve being considered important enough to receive press releases, and I can’t help feeling it’s a bit of a dubious honour, but I suppose it adds to the general entertainment value of the inbox. Mostly I bin these things, but the “brand new product” which pinged across the ether the other day looked suspiciously familiar, so I thought I’d give it the once-over.

The On-Piste Emitter, brainwave of Cambridge Ski Safety, promises to “bring avalanche safety technology to all recreational skiers”, by which it means people skiing exclusively on piste. And there was you thinking one of the things your increasingly expensive lift ticket bought you was groomed runs secured against avalanche risk. But no. Cambridge Ski Safety is here to tell you that you have been risking lift and limb every time you set foot on the nursery slope: “… there are numerous recorded cases of serious incidents, near-misses and on-piste fatalities due to avalanches crossing marked ski runs”.

Well, they’ve only managed to put their mitts on two examples, according to their website, which isn’t looking like ‘numerous’ to me. More like two, to be honest. I’m not about to count Planet Ski’s generic piece about avalanches across the alps, since they were mostly off piste as usual.

The Snow Be. Sorry, On-Piste Emitter

Further digging (or possibly probing, this being avalanches we’re talking about) reveals that up until November last year, Cambridge Ski Safety was trading as Snow Beacon Limited, marketing the same ‘brand new’ product which they were then calling the Snow-Be, before they changed the company’s name in a hurry following the utter flaming they got from every ski website and forum which got wind of the thing.

To be scrupulously fair, they have changed the approach and are now marketing their widget, essentially an avalanche beeper without a search function, exclusively for use on piste and absolutely not suitable for backcountry or similar purposes, don’t even think about it. Given that the slating they got before was largely from ski tourers, mountain guides and the like, justifiably miffed at the idea that their companions might be swanning around without the means to rescue them should the need arise, this is probably a wise move.

So instead they’ve gone for the tried and tested scare the ‘rents ploy, aiming their £50 widget squarely at the paranoid helicopter parent market. The On-Piste Emitter is “for families”, they say, because “on-piste avalanches continue to take the lives of adults and children”. All the time. See them every week.

Oops, there goes another one.

They go even further with the scaremongering on the Snow-Be website, where they state that “We believe that a child has an equal right to alpine safety because avalanches
don’t just happen off-piste.” Watch it, you’re compromising your child’s human rights there. These devices, they assure us ”were designed by a family for all those who want to ski safely in-bounds”, the clear implication being that if you don’t buy one you don’t care about your family’s safety.

On top of all that, they’re trying to lumber already beleaguered school party leaders with the obligation to buy these things. You can even have them adorned with the school’s logo if you like. FFS, isn’t it difficult enough to get a school ski trip together these days as it is?

Now I’m not suggesting that the thing doesn’t work, and nor am I trying to argue, as some have, that it will hinder rescuers in a situation where people with proper transceivers get confused by the multitude of signals emitted by random bystanders carrying transmit-only gizmos (though this would actually be entirely possible if there were enough of them about).

No, what I’m saying is that it’s an expensive irrelevant gadget which you will never need in the entirety of your skiing career, and Cambridge Ski Safety are trying to shift product by frightening gullible parents into thinking that their children are about to be swept to their deaths by a terrifying wall of snow and it will be all their fault because they haven’t bought the right safety equipment. All of which is obvious tosh if you stop and think about it for more than 30 seconds.

Probably better value as safety equipment goes.

While it’s entirely possible to find accounts of on-piste avalanches, they’re few and far between. This is what the pisteurs are there for. That’s why, when you get out there for first lifts on a powder day, you’re quite likely to find half the runs closed until they’ve been secured. That’s what all the big bangs you hear after a major snowfall are about – they’re not chucking bombs about up there just for their own amusement.

Buy one of these toys by all means if it makes you feel good about yourself. But don’t let anyone terrify you into thinking it’s an essential piece of safety equipment and you’ll be neglecting your children’s well being if you spend the cash on sledges, Nutella pancakes and hot chocolates laced with Bailey’s instead, because it’s just not true. In fact you’ll probably get better value for money out of a load of tin hats designed to protect them from meteorite strike.

Caning the credit card

It could be said that the tone of recent Guardian-bashing posts has been a tad negative, so to celebrate the end of this summer’s job, the start of holidays (HOLIDAYS! WOOHOO!!) and impending once in a lifetime trip to Canada, I seize the opportunity to get involved with the upbeat pre-Christmas lust for shiny new things.

I know ‘best of’ lists are a bit of a tired old device, but since that deters neither the national press nor the glossy ski magazines, I don’t see why it should stop me either. Besides, I’ve never done one before. So here are my nominations for the best buys out there, all of them things I have bought, might buy or would quite like to buy but probably won’t because I can’t justify the expense. The latter list being by far the longest, as ever.

Not a storm trooper

Like the Guardian, I kick off with a helmet, though definitely not one designed to make you look like an extra on the death star. Sweet Protection’s Trooper is easily the most comfortable helmet I’ve owned, and it’s also light, low profile and clearly very well made. I particularly like the inclusion of a set of foam fit-pads designed to allow you to customise the lid to the shape of your own individual noggin if required. What’s more, thanks to the nice people at flash sales site Sport Pursuit, it didn’t cost me the usual arm and a leg either.
Sweet Protection Trooper HC, £199. www.sweetprotection.com

The thorny question of how to deliver on-snow tunes to your shell-likes now raises its head, since it’s difficult to squeeze headphones in underneath your new helmet. (And don’t start in with all the ‘ooh that’s so dangerous and irresponsible’ rubbish – there’s no actual obligation to crank it up so loud that your eardrums fall off.) Fortunately the nice people at Sweet have thought of this and offer a set of earflaps with built in speakers should you wish. I can’t as yet vouch for the quality of these as they are languishing at a friend’s house waiting for me to pick them up, but I live in hope that the Nazi Nannies haven’t insisted that the volume be limited to such a level that you can’t actually hear the music, as was the case with K2′s risible in-head sound system. They claim to be iPhone compatible as well, obviating the need to faff around in your pockets when someone rings you up. Perfect.
Sweet Protection Trooper Soundpads, £79,99. www.sweetprotection.com

Not enough yellow.

Still vaguely following the Guardian’s lead, we come to thermal underwear, or ‘base layers’ as the manly sporting goods websites like to call it. Presumably they wouldn’t sell nearly as many if they used words like ‘vest’ or (much worse) ‘tights’. Having bought a merino wool neckwarming thingy last year (largely because it was bright yellow), I am impressed with the quality of merino over artificial fibre. Warmer, lighter, dries in an instant. So I may very well treat myself to spangly leggings from New Zealanders Mons Royale, thereby ensuring that should I be mown down by a piste basher my undies will be more than respectable. Gutted by the lack of acid yellow in this year’s range though.
Mons Royale merino leggings for men or women, 54,95€. www.blue-tomato.com

What do you mean? Of course I look like that.

It’s a symptom of male arrogance anyway, calling vests ‘base layers’, since over half the population wears further garments under its vests. Come on boys, don’t try to tell me loftily that you hadn’t even noticed that women have breasts, because I know for a fact that you all think about them all of the time. My sports bra crop top thingies finally gave up the ghost this summer (not surprising after 20 years of use though, full marks to Calvin Klein), leaving me wth the utterly unexciting prospect of bra shopping. It was a close run thing between Nike and Under Armour, but Under Armour’s Gotta Have It compression top won the day by virtue of being a tenner cheaper.
Under Armour Gotta Have It sports bra, £16. www.underarmour.com

Snug, warm, cheap. Bargain.

Moving up through the multiple layers required for getting out and about in arctic temperatures, we get to Decathlon’s ubiquitous fleecy jumpers. Warm, snug, decent quality and under a tenner a pop. What’s not to like? I don’t think I know a seasonnaire who hasn’t got at least two of these.
Quechua Forclaz 50 fleece for men or women, £6,99. http://www.decathlon.co.uk

When it comes to outerwear on the slopes, it’s my considered opinion that high vis is good, and it doesn’t come more visible than 686′s limited edition Snaggleface jacket. I bought this last season as a birthday present to myself and it’s up there amongst my top five favourite possessions along with the bike and the log splitter. As well as looking cool and fabulous (oh yes it does, and in no way do I look like a very silly person so ner) it boasts the only powder skirt I’ve ever had which actually works. Bit lacking in pockets though, I have to say, especially a sleeve pocket for your lift pass. I ask you, what’s the point in not putting a pass pocket on a boarding jacket?
686 Snaggleface jacket, £200. www.686.com

WTF did you mean, you didn’t see me?

If you’re going to wear an eye-watering jacket, you might as well go the whole hog and get alarming trousers as well, no easy task at the moment for those of us of the female persuasion. Really, what sort of a world is it where the boys get all the best colours? I was after bright green or amazing orange, both of which would have been widely available were I a bloke, but most of the girly gear was limited to sickly looking off-pastels or various shades of pink. Rubbish. The only colour worth having was acid yellow, which is fine except that I already had one pair like that and fancied a change. So two pairs in acid yellow it is then.
Burton Bovary women’s snowboard pant, 89,97$. www.jibtopia.comsno

Next up ……. a mobile phone case! Yes, I know it’s silly, but the Guardian did one, so I’m going to as well. The main difference between two being that this one looks as though it might actually be useful. US company Lifeproof’s iPhone case promises to be shockproof, waterproof and tested to military standards. Whatever that means – I didn’t know the MoD had standards for mobile phone cases but you live and learn. Fifty quid for a mobile phone case may seem a tad pricey to many of you, but when you consider how much it would cost you to replace your iToy after dropping it on a rock, it starts to look quite reasonable.
Lifeproof case for iPhone 4/4S/5, £49,99. http://www.lifeproof.com

Not purchased merely for the appropriate graphic, honest.

After that foray into frivolity, it’s back to the serious stuff with a snowboard. K2′s Fling, to be precise, which strictly speaking is last season’s gear, but I’m not about to buy a new board just so I can witter about it on here. Besides, if you hunt about a bit you can probably pick one up in a sale somewhere, which will be an absolute bargain. The Fling is a true twin with a seriously fast base, which means it turns on a sixpence and goes like shit off a shovel. It makes the run down to La Fee so much more fun when you sail past disgruntled skiers poling along the runout and wondering WTF is going on when everyone knows snowboarders need skiers to tow them along the flats.
K2 Fling, £190,72. www.snowboard1.co.uk

A watch or a dinner plate? Hard to tell.

Finally, and just because unnecessarily techy widgets seem to be all the rage, a fancy watch. This definitely comes in under ‘things I won’t be buying because I can’t possibly justify the expense’. Suunto’s Core tells you all sorts of handy things like altitude, barometric pressure, how far under water you are and whether or not there’s a storm on its way. And probably whether you’re being tracked by bears as well. It even tells the time, should you wish to know anything so mundane. I fancy this for hiking in the summer rather than skiing, but short of a lottery win or a load of them falling off the back of a lorry, I’m not about to get my paws on one any time soon, so it’s largely irrelevant. Natty gizmo though.
Suunto Core, from £235. www.suunto.com

And there we have it. You’ve got to agree it’s better than the Guardian’s poor effort, even if you’d have to be paid to wear a jacket with a ridiculous toothy face on the back.

Fashionista fail

Now, I realise taking the piss out of the national press and its risible ‘lifestyle’ ski coverage is a rather lazy low-hanging-fruit approach to blogging, but in my defence it’s nothing like as indolent as putting up a load of tweets and pretending it’s a blog post (yes I am looking at you, Illicit Snowboarding). Besides, what are you lot doing with your Sunday morning anyway? Bet you aren’t even out of bed yet, let alone slaving over a hot Macbook.

Back to the Guardian again this week, and its list of ‘This Season’s Best Ski and Snowboarding Kit‘. It says ‘best’ in the headline, so the reader should expect to see a comprehensive roundup of the latest useful good-quality gear, right? Er …………. not as such. In fact they seem to have gone out of their way to combine the utterly ridiculous with the merely mediocre, while adding a sprinkling of the mundane just for a change.

I am your father, Luke.

In number one position we’ve got Ruroc’s RG-1 Core, a helmet and goggles combo specifically designed to make you look like a cross between Darth Vader and The Stig. These things have been around for a few years, so I have to assume they do actually sell the odd one, though I’ve never seen one in action. Possibly because they make you look like an extra at a Star Wars convention while at the same time rendering it impossible to talk to anyone, answer your phone or eat crocodiles on the chairlifts.

Next up we’ve got a set of frankly hideous thermals from a company called Sweaty Betty, which I could suggest is not the best monicker for an outfit trying to flog baselayers, items which you hope will remove sweat from your immediate vicinity. Following your granny’s advice that you should always wear respectable underwear in case you’re knocked down by a tram, I’d give these a miss.

Moving on, we come to possibly the most ridiculous thing to hit the world of wintersports since …… well ever, really. Ladies and gentlemen, the dual snowboard. Because snowboarding was just crying out for a snowblade of its very own. The Angry Snowboarder has already more than adequately ridiculed these ludicrous contraptions (and in fact managed to kill two birds with one stone by slating both them and blades in one post, good effort), so I’m not about to go any further here. Suffice to say that they have no place anywhere near anyone’s roundup of best wintersports kit.

Further down the list we come to the apres ski cape, another of Sweaty Betty’s dubious offerings, which they list under ‘key looks’ and call a ‘snow statement‘. The statement in question being ………. what? The mind boggles. Team it wth Ruroc’s helmet for the full Darth Vader look, which will come in handy over the New Year fancy dress party season at any rate, though I can’t think of any other use for it.

Spangly kiddy kit

Scroll through a few fairly ordinary odds and ends, and we come to a kids outfit from Horsefeathers, according to the Guardian a ‘new brand’ which ‘skiers are raving about’. Unfortunately for the hacks in question, Horsefeathers has been on the go since 1989 (something it clearly states right under the company’s logo on its website) and you’re not going to catch skiers ‘raving about’ their stuff any time soon, since they make boarding gear. Which is also very clear from even the most cursory glance at their website. Still, their kiddy range is indeed rather jazzy, and if you want cool outfits for your anklebiters this season you could do worse. The little chap modelling it certainly looks happy enough.

Further down the list we arrive at ……… a mobile phone case! A Nokia/Burton collaboration (complicated things, mobile phone cases), this promises to keep your smartphone warm. Well yes, that is all it does. What did you want for 20€? Tests show that a Nokia Lumix will stream music at -10°C if rugged up in its fleecy case. Personally I find that my iWidget will do much the same while stuffed into an inside pocket, but maybe the Nokia is particularly susceptible to cold. Bit odd for a product designed by Finns, but there you go.

No, I have no idea either.

At the other end of the tech spectrum there’s the Recon Mod Live, a £300 widget which records fascinating information such as the amount of time you spent in the air when you misjudged that lumpy bit, and projects it onto the lens of your goggles. I have no idea what to say about this gadget other than that if you ski into me because you are reading the inside of your goggles you are going to get such a slapping.

Finally, we have a pair of ladies ski pants courtesy of  established French skiwear company Degre 7′s Henri Duvillard range. £220 for the privilege of looking like an elderly French lady, I think not. If I want to do that I can spend a fiver on one of those flowery aprons, thanks.

In amongst this tosh we find a few perfectly respectable bits of kit (jacket courtesy of Sweet Protection, backpack by Dakine) and some average mid-range innocuous items (ladies outerwear from The North Face, fashion gear from Burton), but there’s not a lot which could resonably be described as ‘best’ by any stretch of the imagination.

Seriously, Guardian, where do you get this rubbish from? It woudn’t be difficult to cover the whole ski/board thing well if you could be arsed, though admittedly you’d have to employ a few writers with some idea of what they’re talking about. But that’s not exactly hard either – there’s a fair few of us out here. Belle de Neige might be a bit rude for the average Guardian reader, but I imagine the Francophoney could be relied upon to provide well-informed and largely profanity-free copy. Further suggestions in the sidebar, if you can be bothered to look. Just think, you could be the first national publication ever to cover the industry with any degree of seriousness. Has to be advertising revenue in that, surely.

Ski scam of the week!

I saw one! I did!!

Winter seems to be upon us once again, the telltale signs being ski and board shows in London, online over-excitement following occasional snowflakes spotted on resort webcams, and stupid articles in the national press, a sector which seems to be staffed entirely by non-skiing London-based fashion victims. (No Evan, I do not mean you. Get back on the chairlift.)

The Guardian kicked off the fun this season by sending someone off to write a load of sycophantic rubbish about a chalet host training course. Not one of the training courses which tour ops routinely run every year for all their chalet staff. (Because they kind of have to, right? Assuming they want staff with a vague inkling of what they’re supposed to be doing at any rate.) No, this course was run by Ski Weekends, marketed as some sort of holiday and actually paid for by a bunch of people who I assume have an even more tenuous grasp on the principles of basic arithmetic than I do, if that’s possible.

Consider the figures: working as a chalet host isn’t likely to pay more than about £350 a month for a four-month season. At £545 for the week plus flights and transfers, the cost of the course has just wiped out half your earnings. I’m all for investing in your own development, but really that’s beginning to make £9K a year for a degree in Klingon Studies look reasonable.

Getting to be less of a joke by the minute.

Still, you have to hand it to Ski Weekends – I didn’t think there were any new ways for employers to rip off their seasonal staff, but making them pay for their own training, that’s genius. Presumably they even make a profit on the deal. Their staff, meanwhile, subsidise Ski Weekends to the tune of half a season’s wages and deprive themselves of a week’s earnings to boot since the company no longer needs to run a training course at the beginning of the season and can bring everyone out a week later.

And where did I read about all this? Yes, in the Guardian, that left-wing champion of the low paid, scourge of unscrupulous fat cat employers and tireless campaigner for the introduction of a living wage. Where’s Polly Toynbee when you need her, I ask. FFS, Guardian, what are you thinking about? If it was hospital cleaners and catering staff paying half their wage for training and being fobbed off with lousy accommodation as part of an ‘employment package’ you’d be up in arms about it all over the front page. We just don’t have the necessary working class cachet, do we. Maybe I should get a flat cap and a ferret.

Presumably they imagine the fact that chalet skivvies get to spend their free time skiing rather than hanging around trendy London wine bars with irritating tossers who write drivel for the Guardian makes up for all the rest of it.

Actually, they might just about have a point there, when I come to think about it.

I like to ride my bicycle …..

Not sure he was into the fat-bottomed girls much either.

Actually, I bet Freddie Mercury never got on a bike in his life. Though there’s something appealing about the idea of of the catsuit-clad and abundantly moustachioed king of camp perched astride a sit up and beg contraption with onboard shopping basket.

The rest of us, however, more or less grew up on two wheels. Yes you did, you sedentary porker. Try to remember what life was like before you got a driving licence and a job, and  gave up physical activity in favour of lager and the telly. It’s nice to see that the exploits of  Mr Wiggins and colleagues seem to have given biking a boost despite the ‘har har lycra shorts’ mockery. Presumably these people would also take the piss if you wore ski clothing for skiing or suits to work.

My first ever bike had three wheels, and was therefore technically a trike. I could also call it a fixie, on the grounds that the pedals were stuck to the front wheel, which means I can legitimately say that I was into fixed wheel bikes before they got so mainstream. Take that, pansy hipster city-cyclists. Unfortunately I didn’t realise at the time how terribly cutting edge this was going to be and spent most of my time coveting a playmate’s trike which had a chain, a place for stand-up passengers between the back wheels and even a sort of boot arrangement in which you could cart your favourite stuffed toys about. This was what passed for sophistication in 1960s Falkirk.

My first foray into proper two wheelers was on another playmate’s bike (small, red, fat white tyres), which I managed to keep upright for just long enough to crash into a rather large middle-aged lady who was walking about minding her own business. (I say large and midde-aged – she was probably a completely normal size and just out of school, but everyone looks old and fat when you’re five.) The only thing I could think of to say as she turned round and eyed me beadily was “I didn’t see you”, which struck me even as the words left my mouth as utterly moronic, given that I was convinced she was the size of half a house.

Having outgrown the trike, I went through a bit of a cycling fallow period until I was presented, aged about eight, with a Raleigh Twenty, something which looked like a folding bike but wasn’t. At the time, I thought this machine was the very nuts of the mutt, though looking at pictures of it now I can see that it was in fact a ridiculous contraption with stupidly small wheels. I spent most of my time swapping it with a mate who had a Moulton Mini, a rather pointless activity snce the only real difference between the two was that hers was a slightly darker shade of red.

Stupid wheels. You’d think it was a shopping trolley. Oh wait ………..

Even sillier wheels, if that’s possible.

The trusty Raleigh only bit the dust when a parental windfall resulted in the purchase of – wait for it - brand new bikes, a ridiculous extravagance in Penicuik in the 1970s. This gave me exclusive rights to a purple Raleigh Caprice complete with those rubbish Sturmey Archer three-speed gears which always got stuck in second gear after the first week. I seem to remember that what I actually coveted was an 18-speed racer with drop handlebars, but I have a vague idea this wasn’t deemed girly enough. Still, the fact that it was blatantly your granny’s shopping bike didn’t stop me razzing round the place pretending to be Batman, though having seen what Batman is really riding I have to confess I now feel a tad foolish.

No, mine did not have a basket on it thank you. Would Batman have a basket? I think not.

Batman’s wheels. Do you see a shopping basket? No.

I am now forced to confess that as a student I abandoned cycling, my completely pathetic excuse for this being that I was at university in Sheffield, a city which resembles Rome in that it was built on seven hills. (This is the only way in which Sheffield resembles Rome.) These days I would think nothing of cycling up and down most of the city’s hills, which gives you some idea of what a bunch of pantywaist pansies students are.

A postgraduate move to Portsmouth saw the purchase of yet another shopper bike (what was I thinking of?), this time in pink, for some reason. This is about the only mode of transport a junior reporter on local newspapers can even think of affording. Besides, commuting to Gosport in anything on four wheels involves getting up earlier than necessary, circumnavigating the harbour and sitting in traffic fumes on the M27 when you could be in bed. Bugger that, quite frankly.

Looking at all this, I am at a loss to say why I’ve neglected biking until this summer and the ripe old age of wossname. Possibly the preponderance of hills in this neck of the woods, though since other people come from the ends of the earth (well, Holland mostly) and pay a lot of good money specifically to cycle up our alps that excuse doesn’t really cut it. I suspect it’s some kind of specialised early-onset dementia in which the gradual deterioration of the mental faculties produces the delusion that biking up 10% gradients to somewhere near the snowline might be a fun way of passing a Sunday afternoon. At least I’m not trying to do it on something which resembles a shopping trolley with a saddle.

Still no shopping basket.

Picking the perfect pet

‘Aaaawwwww that must be lovely, all the cutesome little animals!’ people inevitably drool when you tell them you’ve landed a summer job working for the local vet. Honestly, have you all lost any capacity for logical reasoning? Think about it – do you take Fido to the vet when he’s young, healthy and in fine fettle? No, you don’t. You haul him along there because he’s got diarrhoea or exotic parasites, or he’s taken to biting everyone he meets.

Cute. Or would be if it wasn’t in the breadbasket.

Certainly there is a liberal sprinkling of kittens and puppies, and these are indeed cute even if the puppies do have a tendency to wee on the floor in an excess of excitement. But their appeal is rather outweighed by the abundance of huge smelly hounds with matted fur and halitosis. Seriously, why would you think of keeping 50kg of incontinent rottweiler in the house? The stench in there must be worse than the zoo’s lion enclosure at cleaning time on a hot day in August.

If you really must keep an enormous hairy thing the size of a small bear, then possibly think about brushing him now and then. And I venture to suggest that he’d smell a bit less like something marinated for three weeks in rancid yak milk if you bathed him accasionally. Yes, I know hauling eight stone of reluctant Rover into the bath is no easy task. Getting the bugger onto the operating table when he’s out cold isn’t funny either, let me tell you.

Furthermore (and I know you don’t want to think about this, but it comes to all of us), when Fido reaches the end of his rich and varied existence and the vet releases him to gambol off into the afterlife, somebody has to get him into a big plastic sack and stash him in the freezer until he can be respectably cremated. That would be me then. And I can tell you that wrestling my own body weight in dead dog into a plastic bag is not easy, especially when he’s covered in wee. (Look, if you euthanase something half the size of a horse at a moment when he was just about thinking of going out for a tinkle, there’s going to be a lot of wee, all right?)  Apart from any one of the many other considerations, it makes the bag slippery.

Not cute. though at least it wouldn’t actually fit in the breadbasket.

All of which has taught me that there’s far more to choosing a pet than just taking whichever mutt looks at you with the biggest eyes when you’re browsing in Pets ‘R’ Us. In fact, what I’ve mostly learned is that if you’re going to keep an animal at all, you’re probably best off giving the pet shop a miss altogether and shopping at the taxidermist. An ex-boyfriend once bought a house from someone who kept a stuffed Jack Russell on top of the piano, something which I thought strange at the time, but which I now fully understand.

But I accept that despite the clear advantages offered by a stuffed best friend, many people might feel that it lacks a certain something (though I bet there are others out there who even now are wondering how much it would cost to have their life partner stuffed and mounted in a glass case on top of the piano – I can see serious plus points in that arrangement as well).

The first thing to consider here has to be size. No matter how much of a ‘big softy’ that rottweiler is, the fact remains that he weighs nearly as much as you do, and if he decides to take off after something you’ll just have to hope that you didn’t wrap the leash round your wrist, because if you did you’ll be picking gravel out of your skin for months. He could also eat you if he decided he fancied the idea, which is rather worrying. Rule of thumb: do not keep aggressive household carnivores unless they are at most a quarter your size, and preferably a lot less. Reject the rotty and consider a chihuahua – I know they look ridiculous, but you have to admit they have comedy value.

Not a dog so much as a rug on legs.

Next, I’d look at hairiness. You thought people left hair in the plugholes? You should see how much loose fur there is lying around a vet clinic at the end of a day. You could make one of those ’70s Starsky and Hutch style cardigans out of it by the end of a week and still have enough left for a scarf and matching woolly hat. Share your house with one of those Bernese mountain hounds and it’s going to be all over carpets and furniture all of the time. You’ll be changing the hoover bag every two days. Short is good in the fur department. Bald could be better. Consider the attractions of a fish tank.

Finally, think about hygiene. While cats, being fastidious critters, can be left to get on with their own housetraining and will generally only wee on your bed when they wish to communicate displeasure, puppies take a lot of convincing before they get the idea that the world is not their toilet. So you might as well get rid of all your carpets straight off, because you’ll have to do it eventually and it will make mopping up easier in the meantime. Or entertain the idea of a gerbil, an animal which doesn’t wee at all. Ever. (Seriously – they live in the desert, can’t afford to waste the water. If they did wee they’d have to drink it, and how disgusting would that be?)

In summary, your ideal animal companion needs to be small, bald and continent. Ladies and gntlemen, I give you ……….. the perfect dog!

That mohican’s going to have to go

All right, he looks like a cross between Dobby and Gollum, and I can’t actually guarantee the continent part, but cross him with a gerbil and you could probably sort that out in a couple of generations. Result.

Aladdin’s Cave welcomes you. And takes Visa.

Taking no frills a bit too far

Camping. Ah yes, back to nature’s basics. Fresh air, the simple life, just you and your oversized hanky getting away from all this stressy modern gadgetry and consumerfest frenzy etc etc. Not.

In fact, camping is a gear freak’s wet dream, which possibly explains why so many skiers and cyclists are into it. Ooh, shiny spangly gizmos! Lightweight gadgetry! Things which fold up! Gimme!! Yes, here are all my bank details and the deeds to my soul.

Last weekend’s healthy outdoor activities were somewhat curtailed following a mistake with a box of cheap Sauvignon on Friday evening and the following morning spent nattering over coffee, all of which resulted in getting to the chosen camping spot rather too late to do anything very significant. As a result, I found myself doing a tour of Briançon’s outdoor emporia with a vague headache, tempted by summer sales and completely ignoring the fact that a) I have no spare cash and b) I don’t need anything anyway. But let’s be honest, when has that ever stopped anyone buying a load of tat? It’s the zeitgeist innit, everyone’s doing it. Though you should probably note that the difference between you and, say, Greece is that the German taxpayer is likely to give you an unequivocal nein when you ask him to pay your Visa bill.

We all know perfectly well that all it takes to mount a successful camping weekend is a tent, a mattress, a coolbox and a sleeping bag. Yes it is. No, you do not need the mosquito net, first aid kit complete with ebola vaccine, and 85-piece picnic dinner set with wine cooler and cruet. There are two of you and you are camping in Wales.

Not necessary. Really.

But it’s hard to resist the pull of the retail addiction, and you can see the results on campsites all over Europe, not to mention at UK music festivals, which appear to have become an irritatingly middle class sort of trendy, necessitating Cath Kidston tents and wellies costing £200 a pair. Personally I like a camping experience which calls for flipflops, but each to his own.

The compulsive camping consumer comes in two sub-species: the Walter Mitty and the Closet Caravanner. Walter rolls up in his car and proceeds to unload the sort of tent you’d expect to find at Everest camp IV, a sleeping bag which packs down to the size of a matchbox and guarantees to keep you warm on the municipal campsite at Archangel in December, an array of tiny pots and pans and a Swiss Army knife three times the size of his tent. He then proceeds to get takeaway pizza and beer from the campsite restaurant before spending an uncomfortable night on his Inertia X-Frame sleeping mat. Walter would like to think of himself as a cross between Ranulph Fiennes and Bear Grylls, yomping his lone way from the Himalaya to the jungles of Borneo with all he needs in his trusty backpack. When in fact he pre-booked his stay on an Alan Rodgers recommended 3* site with English-speaking reception service six months ago just in case they might be full during the first week in June.

The Closet Caravanners come in pairs, sporting Howard and Hilda stylee his ‘n’ hers waterproofs, and driving huge people carriers as this is the only way they can cram in all the basic essentials. Their tent could sleep a family of six plus staff, and if they didn’t bring the kitchen sink it’s only because the Gelert fold-up washing up bowl is so much more technical. These people poo-poo the bar and takeaway, preferring to empty their portable fridge onto the foldaway table before rustling up a full three course meal on their four-burner cooker with windshield, grill and rotisserie attachment, then getting quietly sozzled and retiring for a good night’s sleep on their three-layer delux flocked airbed with built-in electric pump. As soon as they retire, Howard and Hilda will give in and buy an enormous caravan with an inappropriate brand name like ‘Marauder’, which they will store in a local farmer’s barn, annoying him every other Sunday morning by demanding that he move everything else in there so they can get it out and tinker with it pointlessly in the middle of his farmyard.

Go on Howard, you know you want it.

All these people have lost sight of the basic premise, which is that camping allows you to get out and about without spending unnecessary wedges of your hard-earned cash on mere accommodation, leaving you with enough to have fun every single weekend rather than saving up all year in order to go on holiday for one measly week, only to find that it rains on you for five days out of seven. So get a grip on your common sense, avert your eyes from the spangly array of ultra lightweight packable Agas with GoreTex awning and built-in barbecue, and get back to basics. You’ll have more fun, more often. And there’ll probably be less washing up.

This week’s camping spot: Le Champ de Blanc, Pramorel. Not easy to find, due to total lack of directions anywhere including their website. Turn right opposite Géant Casino and just before McDonald’s, but don’t expect any signposts.
Pitches: Large, grassy, mix of sun and shade. Not too rocky for a change. Ensuite grasshoppers for comedy value.
Facilities: None to speak of, apart from peace and quiet and a fantastic view across the Guisane valley.
Showers: Cute – old fashioned tiling, real shower curtains and a rack for your toiletry bottles. One size fits all water temperature.
Price: 13,20€ in high season for car, tent and one person.

Nurse! The jacket with the long sleeves please.

So this week I will be mainly having myself sectioned before curling up into a little ball in the corner of a room with suspiciously soft walls and sucking my thumb. Or possibly I should just check myself into one of our local psychiatric sanatoria, which we like to call ‘campsites’ so as not to stigmatise the residents, whom we let out now and then to roam about the roads and hopefully gain from associating with normal well-balanced people. Though since most of them seem to use the opportunity either to bike up hills or watch other people biking up hills I might suggest that a change of regimen is in order.

Pah, I’m sure I’ve seen people ride wth no hands.

Following last weekend’s triumph on the Col de l’Echelle and a slightly poxy rainy Saturday, I decided that the best way to spend Sunday would be to cycle up the Col du Glandon. No, I have no idea either. Probably what psychiatrists call a fugue state.

According to mappy.com, the trip from Bourg d’Oisans to the col is 36km. I wouldn’t use this site to do anything important like work out your holiday itinerary if I were you, because it was blatantly nearly 45km, which looks to me like something in the order of a 30% margin for error. (I could easily be wrong about this though – feel free to mock me in the comments section if so.) Mappy also estimated that it should take a cyclist 2h20 to complete the route, suggesting that the site is run by Team Sky on their down days.

Still, I have no doubt that the whole thing was character-building and most certainly a valuable learning experience. And here’s what I learned:

1. http://www.mappy.com is rubbish. Because obviously I would have changed my mind about the project had I realised it was 45km and not a mere 36km.

2. Just because roads look straight on the map does not mean they will be in any way flat. It just means those bits which look like the wormcasts you used to find on the beach have the same sort of gradient as Beachy Head. Next time I do this sort of thing I will look at the route on a walkers’ map which has sensible information like contours and altitude written on it. (Did I say ‘next time’ just then? Someone please lock me up.)

More clothing required.

3. It is a bit chilly at 2000m, even in July. Let’s face it, I really ought to know this. There’s no way I’d go hiking at that altitude without a rucksack containing fleece, GoreTex jacket, trousers, woolly hat, first aid kit, head torch and spare ferret. There is no real reason why, just because I am riding a bike, I should consider it acceptable to be up there in not much more than my vest and pants.

4. It’s positively arctic when you’re whizzing back down at 50kph. I ought to know that as well, given how much time I spend explaining windchill during the winter season. It began to dawn on me that this might be the case when all the pro-looking types at the top started emptying the pockets of their proper cycling T-shirts (no-one else up there in a Marks & Spencer vest, I couldn’t help noticing) and pulling out arm and leg warmers and fancy lightweight windproofs. Half way down, the sun went in and I arrived back in the valley literally shaking with cold, something which makes steering interesting, to say the least.

5. Cycling is not the cheap pastime it at first appears. All you need to do is buy the bike in the first place and you’re off, right? Wrong. Clearly I should have leg warmers and a (no doubt extortionately expensive) windproof jacket. And one of those cycling T-shirts with pockets along the back to put them in.

6. It’s not even cheaper than driving. If we believe mappy (which possibly we shouldn’t), driving up there would have taken me half an hour and cost all of 3,47€. Replacing the calorie deficit took a pint of  fruit smoothie (banana, raspberry, fromage blanc, honey and milk – try it, delicious) plus a pizza, all of which tots up to a good 12€. More if I have the seafood pizza. I can get half way to the parental chateau in Burgundy on 12€ worth of petrol, for God’s sake.

7. Cyclists are lovely. Nobody passed me who didn’t shout ‘Allez!’ or ask how I was doing, or say something unintelligible but vaguely encouraging in Dutch. Two people offered me their expensive energy gel thingies, and I suspect I might actually have died of cold and exhaustion if it wasn’t for the fisherman who stopped his car, fed me madeleines and told me he too had cycled the route and it was indeed ‘tres dur’.

You’re telling me it was tres dur. And I’ve got to get back down now as well.

Next weekend’s activities may involve camping, wine and books. And just to make sure, I’m lending the bike to someone else (I suspect this is a bit like handing out free heroin samples). Maybe I could do a bit of gentle cycling the weekend after though – the Col d’Ornon perhaps. Or Lautaret. Or Alpe d’Huez.

High tech self flagellation

No, not really.

The Tour de France will not be gracing us with its presence this year, something which you might think is a bit of a disappointment to us all. And indeed it might be if you’re the owner of pretty much any kind of local retail or hospitality business, but as far as the rest of us are concerned it’s something of a relief, to be honest. Last year I had to dump the car two kilometres out of town and walk home through stalled traffic and abandoned vehicles. This is what the end of days looks like – roads strewn with redundant machinery while dazed survivors carrying backpacks pick their way through the carnage trying to get home. I suppose we should be grateful there weren’t zombies.

Of course the absence of the event itself doesn’t dampen the enthusiasm of our cycling freak visitors, who spend their mornings trying to kill themselves on the roads before coming back to town to sit in a bar and watch Bradley Wiggins wipe the floor with the opposition on one of the huge screens without which our various hostelries may as well say goodbye to any summer trade whatsoever.

I gather the Wiggo effect has turned road cycling in the UK from a slightly nerdish minority pursuit confined to single men who probably only did it as an excuse to wear tight shorts, into the lastest uber cool sport. This is great news for the manufacturers of bikes, lycra and cycling gadgets, and even better news for anyone looking to pick up a good second hand bargain two years down the line when people realise that a) merely spending £2000 will not miraculously rid you of the beer belly and turn you into Mark Cavendish, and b) cycling to work in the UK involves getting cold, wet and probably run over.

No longer nerds, but still wearing embarrassing shorts.

I have to confess at this point that after ten years spent wondering what institution our summer visitors had escaped from, I too have been sucked into the strange world of biking up big hills at every available opportunity. Not very far in so far, but I can tell that it’s the start of a long dark tunnel full of unnecessary pain and suffering. On the bright side, I can thoroughly recommend it to anyone trying to deal with depression or other mental or emotional trauma – cycling will remove all of your anguish and distribute it evenly between legs and lungs, leaving none for anywhere else. It also means you will be so shagged out at the end of the day that you can barely get the cork out of the wine bottle and click on the next episode of The Walking Dead, let alone brood over whatever’s bothering you.

My embarking on this programme of blatant self harm has less to do with the exploits of Mr Wiggins and his colleagues at Team Sky than the fact that I’ve pretty much run out of flat bits, something which happens all too quickly round here. If I lived in Holland I’d probably never dream of doing something as ridiculous as biking up an alp, but there’s a limit to how often you can ride along to the end of the valley and back without wondering if there’s more to life.

My first foray into this madness needed to be something relatively easy (note use of the word ‘relatively’ there), so I picked the Col de l’Echelle on the road from the Val Claree near Briançon over to Bardonecchia in Italy. The reasons for this were as follows:

1. It’s only about 16km from La Vachette at the bottom of the valley to the col.
2. Most of it looked fairly flat (you can tell I’m not really committed here)
3. A friend – also a beginner biker – did it last summer, so how hard can it be.
4. It’s far enough away to offer an excuse to go camping again. Yay!

Nevache – nice day out. Avoid the right turn.

The route up from La Vachette towards Nevache near the head of the valley is indeed fairly flat and very nice as well, what with the river and the mountains and all that alpine meadow business. If you’re on holiday in the area and fancy a nice bike ride, I recommend it. Take a picnic.

The road up to the col is a right turn about a kilometre before Nevache, and it doesn’t mess about. This cycling lark is as much about psychology as anything else, I discover, and that moment when you realise you’ve gone through all three of those big gear wheels on the front plus the little ones at the back, and you can no longer make it any easier, is as bad as the point where your body runs out of sugar and switches to burning fat. Not that I got that far, obviously. In fact according to my iWidget the whole project didn’t get rid of the calorific equivalent of a Mars Bar, which was most disappointing. Evidently I have a super-efficient metabolism, which will stand me in good stead come the zombie invasion but isn’t great when it comes to those Nutella doughnuts the boulangerie insists on producing.

I’d like to say I got to the col in a oner without stopping for a wheeze, but resolution (and legs) gave out at a point which turned out to be a mere 50 or so metres from the top. Gutted. Which is more psychology – if I’d known the holy grail was just around the corner I could probably have found a last morsel in the corner of the motivation bag. I bet those Tour riders spend all the rest of the year obsessively driving the routes, noting all the landmarks and working out the gradient. Cheating, I call it.

Still, wheeze break or not, I did it. I rode up a col on a bike, thus proving that it is in fact possible for mere mortals and not confined to the machine-creatures who get to wear that yellow jersey. If it stops raining tomorrw I might try the Col du Glandon – bits of that look flattish as well.

Yes all right, I did stop on the way up. Let’s see you do it, smartarse.

This week’s camping spot:
Site: Camping Les Gentianes, La Vachette
Pitches: Choice of sun or shade, bit stony but peggable
Facilities: Tiny swimming pool, extortionate wifi. Bread from the snackbar in La Vachette, order the day before. (What kind of campsite doesn’t sell bread? Bizarre.)
Showers: Huge cubicles with ensuite wasbasin – you could have a party in there. Adjustable water temperature.
Price: 13€ a night in July/August for a car and a tent plus one person.