I love travelling, but I hate packing. My skiing packing is made harder today by the fact that I’ve borrowed a suitcase that seems to be the smallest one in the world. Luckily I have small feet so my ski boots don’t take up as much room as they otherwise would but I still only have a little room for actual clothes once ski gear is in there. My backpacking solution to this would be to wear my bulkiest clothes on the plane, but if I wore my ski trousers I would die of heat exhaustion…I’m also having trouble with the fact that I’m anticipating that staying in a nice hotel in Zermatt may be considerably more upmarket than self catering in the three valleys…I probably need at least one pair of shoes that aren’t big fluffy boots and maybe a top that doesn’t say north face. The really unfair thing is that even if I pack into said dinky bag, I’m still going to turn up carrying my skis in a separate bag and probably a book or three in my rucksack, so I’ll look like a seriously girly packer despite not having no pretty clothes with me.
However, the ski trip will be lovely and I’m very excited!
I have recently laughed in a cruel and slightly mocking fashion at someone who packs into vacuum bags (I know, I’m illogical and unkind). This now seems like an eminently sensible packing solution, I apologise wholeheartedly. (I still think they’re a little excessive for a weekend though).
I think I’ll go and have a cup of tea and ponder L space for a wee while. Wish I had a Luggage!
I have spent this week at Ashburton cookery school doing the Wine and spirit education trust (WSET) intermediate course. It has been very pleasant! Only two of us attended the course. The instructor was a very nice lady who was also a really good teacher and quite good fun to spend a week discussing and trying alkyhol with. The sheer quantity of information imparted was absolutely huge! Bit unnerving to think I was going to learn how to taste wine in a knowledgable fashion and find myself studying all the wine producing regions in the world (well, the ‘important’ ones anyway, England was not on the syllabus!) The exam (50 question multiple guess) was really quite tough, lots of nastily similar sounding words as choices and a lot about obscure villages / vineyards / styles / production methods in France / Portugal / Spain and Italy. We also learnt a lot about South Africa, USA, Chile, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and all the various major grape varieties found within them. Quite a lot for a week! This geography and history was interspersed with tasting lots of nice stuff (such as Sauterne, very yummy sweet wine, made from semillon grapes affected by Noble rot or Botrytis I now know!) and some not to my taste stuff (Fino sherry filed under nevermore in my book I’m afraid!) I feel much more able to help with wine tastings in the pub now that I can tell people (up to a point, this point being the limit of my mushy mothballed brain) where the wine comes from, a bit about the region and what they can expect from it!
If I find the time over the next few days I may attempt to write a little bit about each style of wine I tried…I expect I’ll do something with my new found knowledge to stop it running out of my nose anyway! We were extremely well fed and looked after by the cookery school staff, it’s a really nice place, flapjacks and coffee and nice lunches appeared in a steady stream throughout the week.
After all this combined study and munching it’s a very good thing I’m going skiing next week, hurrah! My family, my brother in laws family and the boy are all going to Zermatt for the week. My little red skiis are looking forward to the outing lots and lots! I do hope there’s some snow!
