Chalet Hosting- Training

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Arriving at Victoria Coach station on Wednesday afternoon to be greeted by Viv; both our bags bursting at the seams and huge grins on our faces ready to begin five months of cooking, cleaning and SKIING in the alps.

We arrived at the Travellers Tavern to meet our fellow Skiworld friends who we would be working with. We quickly discovered that we had the biggest bags out of everyone, so red faced we shuffled into some seats and got chatting. Luckily, everyone was really nice and the Alpe d’Huez crew got to the front of the bus to start swapping skiing stories. Our training week was held in Meribel which we were really excited about because it is a top French resort. As the coach pulled up, we weren’t disappointed; our jaws dropping when we saw the vast amounts of snow, piled metres on top of cars, chalets and roads. I was also shocked by the size of the huge icicles decorating the chalets.

We dragged our ginormous bags up steps to our home for the next five days. The chalet we were staying in was lovely and we were given the afternoon off to explore. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much open so we simply walked about in the snow and plucked icicles.

Later on we were fed one of the huge three course meals off our menu by our resort managers and told that we would also be responsible for cooking later in the week.

We were split into groups on a rotation and each had chores for the day; the first day our group cooked a choco banana cake, then on the following days we cleaned, cooked breakfast, dinner and canapés as well as fitting in health & safety, food hygiene and customer ser vices sessions. It was tiring to say the least and our cooking could have gone a lot better.....

As a result of the hard work everyone was putting into their cooking there were huge amounts of food to go round and I never found myself hungry. In fact, being there for just a few days definitely added a few inches to the hip. Viv and I were so full of energy from all the food and no exercise that we ended up running out into the snow at lunch and throwing ourselves around for ten minutes to let off some steam.

Despite enjoying ourselves during training, we were keen to get to our resort, Alpe d’Huez and settle into our rooms. Viv and I would be staying in the thirty person ‘Chalet Eterlous’ along with the head host Bex. To our complete delight, when we got to the accommodation we discovered a huge room with plenty of storage space and an ensuite. We were thrilled about this because we hadn’t heard great reports of staff rooms.

There was no time to rest after we had settled in and we were soon off out with the rest of the team to enjoy the nightlife of Alpe d’Huez. The reps in our team had already sussed out the best bars and snagged some shots for us in each so I ended up spending hardly any money but having an amazing time. Best bars- Rum Bar (where the owner makes huge vats of rum of all kinds of flavours) and Smithys.

After getting in at 3.00am we were quickly up again to visit our chalet for the first time. Chalet Louisa is a bit of a walk away from our room; about 15 minutes up a steep hill, but we’ve decided that with all the chalet food that we will be eating, this is probably a bonus.

We were in awe upon arriving at our ‘place of work’. It is quite literally on the piste and is a stunning chalet with a brand new kitchen for us to make our mark on. Viv and I were grinning from ear to ear as we walked from the sauna room towards the hot tub. The downside is, we would have to clean to entire place but I don’t really think you could ask for a better working environment.

The best part of our whole day was the ‘ride’ home. We had taken sledges with us and sledged, on the piste, the entire way down. We were both laughing so hard that we couldn’t breathe and we FLEW down. It was hilarious and completely makes up for the trek up.

Our next task was to create an inventory for our chalet, clean and shop. The inventory was horrendous, cleaning was horrendous and we were £300 over budget for our first shop. Oh dear.

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Comments

[Lyn Davies]

Mum's view.
Great to read your news. How on earth did you make the time to write?