Christmas is just days away and the pistes are suitably snowed under in the Trois Vallees making for a very festive appearance :-). Lots of things happening this side of the mountains this week, ice sculpting, fireworks on the pistes, father christmas visits, freestyle championships and much more... And that's not including the main reason for a ski holiday - skiing! The skiing in January still promises to be the best in a while due to the solid heavy snowfall for the past seven days so check out www.ski-savvy.com for the best and cheapest ski deals around! :-)

Ski Savvy has arrived in the Three Valleys :-) A white welcome was very much appreciated and slopes are beckoning! Set up is going well so we have lots of fun and snowy activities for our visitors including bobsleigh trips, bar crawls, ski away days, parapenting and much more! Visit www.ski-savvy.com for more info on cheap ski holidays to the Three Valleys over winter...

Ski Savvy's 4 Resorts

Meribel – Normally, having lived in a place you can see it has some bad points as well as good. I struggle with Meribel. It has a friendly, cosy atmosphere for visitors and residents alike. It has something for everyone – sports centre, bars, restaurants, cinema, live-music. It is surrounded by pistes so getting skiing in a morning is easy peasy. One unusual thing in a French town is that most people are English but I doubt anyone could class this as a bad thing, although French language practise is limited, usually to a Merci to the pisteys or bus drivers around resort. And, as you’d expect food and drink is quite expensive. Apart from that, perfection.

Mottaret – Mottaret is THE place to stay for snow enthusiast. No accommodation is further than 50m from the piste so bouncing out of bed straight onto your board/ skis is the norm. It is possible to ski Courchevel and Val Thorens by one gondola each, at the top of which the Three Valleys really are at your feet. Nightlife is a little more subdued but a few cosy bars and restaurants go on into the small hours and a regular bus service to Meribel keeps the night-owls happy.

Brides les Bains – When walking through the spa town of Brides, it’s like discovering a hidden gem. The perfect place for a cheap but top value ski holiday, some luxury hotels do half board deals at astonishingly low prices. At 600m Brides doesn’t see much snow but from early March onwards it gets to shorts and t-shirt weather with skiing still in full swing higher up. The ideal sun/ski holiday with a bit of sunbathing thrown in! It has easy access to the whole 3 Valleys by taking a 25 min gondola ride up to Meribel, its very charming and typically French, Brides is much cheaper than up top and has its own traditional bakery, restaurants, food and ski shops, it even has its own spa, cinema and casino!

La Tania – Even though La Tania lies in the Courchevel Valley it is like Meribel’s little sister. Great for families, it is small, cosy, car-free and based around the piste. The Ski Lodge, a one-stop bar/ restaurant serves mouth-watering top value dishes by day and hosts après-ski sessions, themed evenings and happy hours by night. A choice of other restaurants and small bars makes this an excellent little resort for all.

December has started! 10 days until Meribel opens it's doors to the Trois Vallees ski world and also 10 days until we head out for the winter in preparation for the season ahead :-). Winter tyres are on and woolly hat is bought..! The greenness of the lower slopes is causing anxiety to some but snow is on the horizon and moving in, roughly 25cm is forecast to come this weekend alone! So keep up the snow dances and lie back to watch the snow fall!

The excitement for Winter builds! Val Thorens opened it's slopes yesterday with 20cm of snow in resort and 40cm up top and Winter season workers are starting to arrive in their resorts all over the Alps. With an especially mild November at the moment it is easy to forget that Christmas is less than a month away but it is coming upon us fast! www.ski-savvy.com has some excellent Christmas ski deals to France on at the moment with LOW prices from £303 which will rise as departure date gets nearer so the perfect time to get booking! If you can't wait that long, the forecast is for snow for high ground in Northern England and Scotland within the fortnight so pack the sledge and head Northwards!

Learning to snowboard

Until living in France for the whole winter I’d never really thought about learning to snowboard, I was quite happy exploring the mountains on two boards with independent feet rather than one, but last winter season, with the feeling of unlimited ski days ahead of me I thought I’d give it a whirl.

My first new experience happened in the ski shop. Apparently the first thing you should know is whether you are goofy or regular. I didn’t know so the assistant pushed me over from behind. I thought this was slightly harsh but he said it was to test my feet to see which one would step out first... It was my right foot so I was regular and that foot should go first on the board.

Having put my boots on (vastly more enjoyable than ski boots – one up to snowboarding) I headed down to the ‘debutant’ baby slope in Mottaret centre. After a couple of hours I felt to have mastered absolutely nothing apart from managing to see why most snowboarders you see on the slopes are sat down – it was the position I ended up in most too.

I then called it a day and swapped by board for skis to reassure myself I was capable of one snow discipline and booked in for some beginner lessons.

So, on Monday morning I went and stood under the “beginner” snowboard class sign outside ESF in Mottaret centre. Other people started to show up in the form of two French children and an OAP who looked as though he wasn’t sure what he was doing there. Despite this the class started off well.

We all took turns at practise turning, first going down (picking up scary amounts of speed) then turning with the front edge then the back. This was a slight problem as the board seemed to want to go straight into the group of people standing about at the bottom of the hill at one point but luckily they saw the funny side! The children turned out to be the best at this, as one might expect.

Falling on my knees seemed to be my weak spot and by the time 12.00 came, I was relieved to be able to give them a break and swap board for skis. On my way back from an afternoon upright on skis I passed the OAP who was still with snowboard and I got a sudden flash of panic – should I have stuck at it and been practising all afternoon too, will everyone else be 3 times better than me when we regroup tomorrow??!

In fact, they were, but I could convince myself it was marginal. We went up “Plattieres” gondola to the top of a blue and attempted to swish our way down in nice even waves. The instructor was a bit preoccupied so it was easy to slip down on the back edge while his head was turned. He was in fact preoccupied because the young girl had taken off her board and refused to carry on. She started to walk down the piste and let go of her board. A snowboard, unlike skis, has no brakes so when she dropped it; it set off hell for leather down the piste with the instructor haring after it.

This caused a nice distraction and after a few more wavy attempts, and getting the hang of it nicely, we were safely at the bottom.

I decided to go it alone from then on, I had grasped the basics (honestly) and just needed to practise at my own speed. So I strapped on the board again the next day and progressed quite well! Aside from a worrying moment when a colleague rang me when in the middle of a flat piste, unable to move with people whizzing past on either side, I was steadily impressing myself!

I kept on snowboarding every few weeks and have improved immensely since those interesting(!) few hours on the baby slope...

I’d definitely recommend snowboarding as it is exhilarating when the sense of achievement kicks in! I would also recommend getting knee pads to protect from the pain I experienced... And sticking at it, it does just need practise and after a solid few days of boarding, it can be grasped and the fun begins!

The Three Valleys is a great ski area for beginners and experts alike. Check out www.ski-savvy.com for cheap ski package deals to Meribel, La Tania, Mottaret and Brides Les Bains starting at around £203 per person per week.

11.11.11 - a special date which also signifies one month until the in-resort team head out for the mountains, very exciting times! The gloomy grey skies at home make crisp snowy pistes and blue skies seem far away in time and space but the countdown is on! With early bird offers under way the website is a hive of activity and tweets are zooming around netspace about the forthcoming season! So come along and check out www.ski-savvy.com to see the latest offers and grab yourself a cheap ski deal!

Today is a very exciting day - ski-savvy.com is now live! Lots of amazing deals on cheap ski holidays to choose from with the ski season closing in... Clocks have gone back so what better way to spend a dark evening than planning a forthcoming ski trip to one of the best resorts in France :-) It's just over six weeks until the Ski Savvy starts out in the Three Valleys and we're looking forward to every minute of it!

Winter is creeping up on us slowly but surely – today is the first day of the London Metro Ski and Snowboard Show, snow has arrived in the French Alps and there is even a sprinkling at the top of the Scottish mountains... And while everyone’s in the Wintery mood, in time for potential booking of ski holidays, Ski Savvy’s new website goes live early next week so an exciting time at the Ski Savvy office! Check it out next week for astonishingly low priced holidays to the top ski area of the Three Valleys in France with special offers and early booking deals – details coming soon J.

We're only just out of September and already Meribel, Mottaret and La Tania have a decent sprinkling of snow. With temperatures getting well into the minus at night it is looking promising! Although not yet enough to ski on, the Three Valleys looks set to have a good base for Winter 2011/12 so fingers crossed it just keeps coming!