Travelling

Home again after a hard week skiing in Zermatt. Apologies to all those who responded to my tweets via Facebook - I tried to go direct  through Facebook but they prevented me, even though I had the password,  in case I was a hacker.

The Matterhorn must be the most photographed mountain in the world, I think, and it certainly towers over the village. Click on the pic to view it in a bigger frame. We had a view of it from our balcony this year, and saw it in many of its changing moods. You will, too, when I get my pics downloaded!

Getting there takes all day.  A flight from Glasgow carried 3 people for Zermatt - and the conveyor belt in Geneva airport broke down just as their baggage was coming through, so we had to kick our heels on the bus for an hour before they joined us. But this time we arrived at our hotel in time for dinner.

Coming home, which is the most recent memory, ran something like this :  leave hotel at 8.15am and ride electric mini cars to railway station to get to Tasch, where we get out and dash, as far as you can dash with a trolley laden with skis, boots, suitcases x 2, to the waiting coach. Then begins the three hour ride down through the mountains to Visp, then Sion, Montreux and beside the lake all the way to Geneva. Arrive at 12 o'clock and discover the bus has parked at the extreme far end of the concourse for Easyjet flights to the UK. Pound down the half mile, get inside concourse and discover horrendous queue snaking in those nasty U-turns across the entire floor. Stand in said queue for 27 minutes, reach check-in desk, then outsize baggage desk for skis and then escape upstairs to discover an equally big queue to get through customs.

Finally get into Duty-free and buy gifts for  the wonderful people looking after Tim, and then eat lunch.  By now it is after one o'clock and the gate closes at 1.35. It is a 15 minute walk from Duty Free to Gate D82, but thankfully a lot of it is via conveyor belts, but we make it with a quarter of an hour to spare and then discover a gaggle of school children will be sharing the plane home with us. What a delight....

As it happened, the flight was on time, the kids were fine and the plane arrived back in  Newcastle ten minutes early. Then, naturally, as always happens at Newcastle, we had to wait another 20 minutes for our baggage to come through. Skiis are always last, naturally. Then out into the airport and into a taxi. A dank, miserable grey day and we were home by 4pm. What a day!