The Winter Olympics in Vancouver have inspired many people to look at sports often overlooked at other times of the year, and rather than take up the Luge or Curling, I fancied a bit of skiing, particularly appealing having watched the madcap Ski Cross the other night.
As my wife and 6 and 8-year old sons can all ski, I figured it was high time for me to join them, so I took a 3-hour intensive course at Xscape in Castleford, West Yorkshire.
Joined by a bunch of York University students, our instructor Mikey had a much-needed sense of humour and, following a quick intro to the basics about the equipment, he very quickly launched into teaching us the snow plough and how to turn, control and stop, and within 90 minutes we were all bombing up and down the nursery slope, slaloming round cones and wishing we were all slightly better so we could tackle the main slope at Xscape, the 170m long slope covered in over 1500 tonnes of fresh snow.
The whole experience was terrific and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s never tried it to give it a go (for West Yorkshire accommodation near Xscape, check out our hotels in West Yorkshire). I’ll definitely be going back and after a couple more lessons will hopefully be unleashed on the main slope.
Might even try snowboarding next time…
I’ve been to Xscape before and we sat in the bar above the ski slope watching everyone come down. It looks great fun, and I quite fancy the idea of learning to snowboard. I’ve always wanted to go on a skiing holiday, but thought it’s quite a lot of money if you have to spend half the holiday learning to ski on nursery slopes because you won’t get the most out of it. It strikes me that this would be a good way to learn the basics and prepare yourself before hand.
I’ve noticed you can use Tesco Clubcard points at Xscape at the moment too, which seems like fantastic use for them! Now might be the time to hit the slopes!