A skiing trip with 16-year-olds is a tricky one — where to take my two for a week that won’t involve remortgaging, has enough skiing that we won’t get bored and après that’s lively but not so banging that I feel old? Obviously I still want them to think I’m cool, even when I’m not. The dream for them would be the Three Valleys in France: snow-sure season-round, every kind of terrain imaginable, party silliness at La Folie Douce, bonkers hotel luxury in Courchevel and fast, reliable lifts. But I thought the prices there would mean that it must remain a dream.
Then I remembered Les Menuires, the small satellite resort sandwiched between Méribel and Val Thorens is where I learnt to ski as a teen, not because it was cool but because it was cheap — especially after we had convinced a friend’s dad to drive eight of us there in the local scout troop’s clapped-out minibus. Year after year we went, staying in apartments with less charm than you’d find in a suburb of Leningrad (it was still called Leningrad then). Why hadn’t I thought to return? Partly because of the memory of the drunken fools we used to be; partly snobbery.
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