NOVEMBER 2008

The weather so far this month has been changeable with quite a lot of rain, which of course means we have lots of snow up at La Mongie and the ski resort is opening on the 29th Nov, which is 2 weeks earlier than usual.
People have been going up the mountain with their cross country ski’s, so it looks like we are going to have a good season this year.

We have also had some lovely hot and sunny days as well. I have been out on both my MTB & road bike 4 times in the last 8 days. Steve and I drove over to the Lourdes valley on Sunday with our mountain bikes and spent a lovely day riding up the valley next to the river where there are some nice single tracks running parallel to a cycle path which is a disused railway track and has been developed for cycling, walking, skating.

This is a pic that I took just past Argeles-Gazost.

There is a new Ryanair flight going from Stanstead to Tarbes/Lourdes starting on the 20th of December (20 mins drive from Bagneres) flying from Saturday to Saturday for the ski season. Hopefully if there is a good demand for the route it will continue during the summer.

Andrew is flying with his snowboard from Luton to Biarritz for 10 days over Christmas, arriving the day before his 25th Birthday. It is an easy drive from there. Steve prefers driving to Biarritz rather than Toulouse, although it is further it takes about the same time to drive.

Gary was made redundant at the end of September, the company he had been working for the last 4 years went into liquidation. He is working for an agency he has worked for in the past as a Landscape gardener, temporarily, until he can find another permanent job on a similar salary that he was earning in his last company. Both Gary and Eli have both got part time jobs at the local Leisure centre to help supplement the shortfall to their income. They both seem very positive and Gary has a few irons in the fire as far as a permanent job is concerned.

We will have to get our ski stuff this week and check it out for the start of the season on the 29th. I can’t believe how quickly it has come round.

Steve and I were up at La Mongie bright and early on the 29th Nov for the lifts to open at 9am. Steve and I had a great day skiing. We managed to go skiing about 8 times before picking Andrew up from Biarritz on Sat 20th Dec and we still managed to have an afternoon on the pistes. Andrew enjoyed being back on his snowboard again.

It was Andrew’s 25th birthday on the 21st Dec and you can guess where we spent the day. Yes! That’s right on the pistes.

Luckily we only had a few guests during Andrews stay so managed between Steve and me to take Andrew snowboarding most days. Christmas as usual was spent skiing/snowboarding with an early evening Christmas dinner. A perfect day!

We had a New Years Eve party with about 50 guests. The party went very well and everyone seemed to enjoy them selves. Sorry for all our friends back in the UK who used to come to our New Years Eve parties every year, you were all missed.

From New Year’s Eve for the next week we were very busy everyone was here for the skiing and the weather was great.