Skiing in Spain: A fun winter hobby that's closer than you thought

You don't need to be rich, young or fearless, your nearest slopes are less than two hours from Valencia airport, and even beginners and scaredy-cats can crack it...

SKIING: If you missed the one-off highschool trip, you've lost the chance now – you have to be on celebrity wages to afford it, need to be young, super-fit and a total daredevil, and there's no point in booking a trip unless you're already ultra-competent.

Wrong on every count! Did you know you can take a three-day skiing trip with two nights' B&B in a very decent hotel, equipment hire and lift pass included, for about €250? Or that you can spend a day on the slopes, two-hour lesson included, plus all the gear, for under €40? Even if you have to save up or use a credit card, it's very accessible, financially, on an average income.

And why bother anyway? Well, if you've ever gone sledging as a kid when snow put paid to school for the day, been down a water slide at a swimming pool, or a helter-skelter, you'll have a good idea of what skiing feels like. Basically, you're letting your inner seven-year-old take over (shouting, “weeeeeeee!” as you whizz downhill is optional).

Living in Spain means you're perfectly placed for starting skiing from scratch, or carrying on with it if you already know what you're doing. Travel agencies offer package trips, or you can easily organise your own if you have access to a car; from the Costa Blanca, you won't have to drive more than about four to seven hours to get to the Sierra Nevada or the Pyrenees, and the slopes of Teruel (where the pistes are open from mid-December to, usually, at least late March) are even feasible in a day.

However long it would take you to drive to Valencia airport from where you live, add on another hour and a half to two hours (depending upon how confident you are on narrow mountain roads. They're not too scary or dangerous, but if you're a bit of a nervous driver, you might find yourself making heavy use of first gear initially and concentrating more closely than usual). Just north of Valencia on the A-7, take the A-23 (Teruel-Zaragoza) exit and carry on for another hour; the exits for the stations of Javalambre and Valdelinares are clearly signposted.

At the entrance to either, you'll have another 22 kilometres of mountain to climb, but ample free parking right at the foot of the slopes means you won't have to walk far once you get there.

Costs and logistics: What to budget for and where to start

You'll need to book a forfait (lift pass), hire skis, boots and poles (helmets are available separately for a few extra euros) online via www.aramon.com, but look out for deals. Accident and health insurance at around €7 a person is essential, because the medical centre on site is privately-run – it's a long way to the nearest public hospital – and you'll need to budget for around €4 for damage insurance when you pick up your skis, plus a refundable €3 to use the lockers. Otherwise, ski, pole and boot hire comes in at around €17 to €21 a day – forfaits can be as expensive as €52 but all-in deals can get you onto the slopes for around €40, or a 'beginners package', with all of this included plus a two-hour group lesson can cost about the same (the downside is that you'd have to set off early; classes normally start at about 11.00).

It tends to work out cheaper to book a hotel – you can purchase the whole package via the website, and if you're there for two or three nights, the price of a bed for the night generally works out less than petrol for a return journey, meaning a three-day trip is cheaper than three separate days out.

For Javalambre, the more popular of Teruel's two resorts and the nearest to the Costa Blanca, the closest town for a hotel is La Puebla de Valverde, about 25 kilometres from the slopes, most of which is uphill; however, many skiers also stay in the hotels in Mora de Rubielos, another 15 kilometres out but on a good, main road with no traffic, meaning it does not feel quite as far away as it sounds. In total, from Mora, the car journey to the slopes is about 45 minutes.

If it's your first time and you can't find a beginners' deal with a group class included, you'll need to book a lesson – these can be expensive, especially if you're on your own. It'll cost you in region of €40 for an hour for one, a little over half of this for two, and drops down to under €10 for six or more, so if you can drum up a small group, it's far more financially viable. However, you can't avoid having to book a class for your first skiing experience; you need to know how to stop, start and turn, and how to untangle yourself and get up again if you fall over. The key move you'll need to master before going off on your own is the 'wedge', or cuña in Spanish, and your first lesson will mostly focus on this.

Once you've had a class, you can then practise on your own, so you can probably avoid the cost of this after your first lesson – although it will take you longer to master the sport without an instructor and tuition is always recommended in any discipline. Every now and then, you may decide to reserve an hour with a tutor to reassess your progress and troubleshoot, whilst plugging away tout(e) seul(e) in between, but much of this depends upon your personal learning style.

Lifting off

You don't have to be fearless by nature and it doesn't matter if you're scared of