10 days of hols left - WWEMD* do?

*What would European maggots do, of course.

So I find out to my surprise that I have 10 days of hols left to use by 31 Dec 05, not 5 as I thought.

I guess 4 or 5 of those will be blown on long weekends (family matters) but that would still leave me with a cool week in December.

I'm in London and there are cheap tickets to the Alps galore.

WWEMD? A couple of long weekends or a week? Book flights now (say to Lyon or Grenoble) and follow the snow or wait to book until later? If a week, which one - Christmas to New Year or earlier?

(last two years I had a long weekend just after mid-December, once in Cervinia and once in AlpD'huez/Les Deux Alpes). Snow was ok-ish in Dec 03, bad then excellent in Dec 04).

Any maggot who'd ski with someone caught in the no man's land between holiday gaper and proper skier (if I end up in your backyard that is)?

Horizon, how about going to Banff with the DMSS? ;)

Fox, looked at that (thanks btw), too expensive at £599, seems to me!

(are you going?)

OTOH, I know little about Banff at that time of the year, perhaps someone will chip in with a view...

The recent influx of Euromaggots had me thinking of a news item I recently saw...


The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase-in plan that would be known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the"k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replased with "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be ekspekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"s in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru! And zen ve vil tak over ze vorld!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pinner

The recent influx of Euromaggots had me thinking of a news item I recently saw...

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We're just spreading our love!

Careful what you spread around here. Never know who'll be poking around.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pinner

The recent influx of Euromaggots had me thinking of a news item I recently saw...


The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase-in plan that would be known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the"k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replased with "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be ekspekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"s in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru! And zen ve vil tak over ze vorld!

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Taking over the world would be alright i guess, but I wouldn't do it if I had to start sounding germanin the process.

Norway in late nov should be pretty good. Lillehammer is easy to get to, and there are fairly reasonable flights to Oslo going :)

edg

edg, now that's interesting, I hadn't considered Norway (er, I do mean Norwedge, of course ;) ).

Western CH and PDS; Dec '03 & '04 - Pitiful piste-only until the 19th / 21st of Dec and then we got hammered both years . Off-piste was open almost over-night in PDS!

Not sure what happened in Dec. in the les Alpes Bernoises (central CH) and east into Austria.

Bottomline: who can predict?

Suggest:
1. Go higher for dependable skiing. Argentiere/Cham or Zermatt. Zermatt lodging is expensive, but they do have a large hostel in the village w/ swimming pool access. internet site for rates and availability

2. Ski before the week of Christmas Holiday. Dec 21 until Jan 2 is the most expensive and crowded (outside of the month of Feb.).

3. Norway does sound very interesting...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by edg

Norway in late nov should be pretty good. Lillehammer is easy to get to, and there are fairly reasonable flights to Oslo going :)

edg

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I'm going to have to disagree here. Norway in late November is VERY touch and go. If you're visiting one of the big resorts with snowmaking, you might be OK (Hafjell/Lillehammer, Geilo, Hemsedal), but generally there won't be that much natural snow on the ground. In 9 years of living on the southwest coast (where the resorts don't have snowmaking), I only remember one or two years where there was skiing by Thanskgiving.

This eurotard would go last minute, check out where it's dumping and then go there.

November has some ok snows. Often times there seems to be some kinda snow drought during dec.

I wouldn't do the full week during dec but shoot for long weekends (see above reason) and as said, go with the snow.