Group tours for solo skiers are booming and MANDY APPLEYARD reckoned a trip the slopes could be original way to find love. But after a week of bruising mishaps she asks...
Is going off piste really the way to me et a man?
LyING on my side, snow seeping into my secondhand salopettes like oil into a rag, I watch more adept skiers continue up the mountain on the lift from which I have just fallen.
Surrounded by giant snow-covered pine trees, I have no clue where I am nor what to do next, but there’s no way back: I’d need to be 20 ft tall to get back on the button lift above me.
Feeling humiliated, afraid and lost was not how I’d envisaged the first day of my solo skiing holiday in the Italian Alps. I thought I’d be swigging hot chocolate with a happy gang of like-minded new pals in a cosy mountain chalet, not sodden and tear-soaked as I ski and stumble.
This agony is repeated for an hour until I emerge onto a piste, blue with cold and dizzy with relief. I ski — alone — back down the mountain to the safety of terra firma and mulled wine in my hotel.
That evening I win ‘The Biggest Liability’ award from the group I’m with, and have to wear a comedy hat with a mock exploding bomb on top of it the following day.
My first-day debacle became a fitting metaphor for a challenging week of skiing in the Dolomites. What I’d anticipated would be a friendly, life-affirming holiday in the company of 50 members of ‘the UK’s friendliest social and activity club’ was actually one of the loneliest weeks of my life.
‘Spice? The social group? Oh, you’ll have a ball!’ my friend Helen enthused when I told her I’d been invited to join a Spice group ski trip.
‘And you’re bound to meet a man. There’ll be lots of fit, intrepid guys, so you can choose one in time for Valentine’s Day!’
HeLeN was wrong on all counts. While I met some lovely people aged from about 30 to 70, I also encountered several decidedly unfriendly women (I secretly called them The Frosties) and, among the doctors and engineers, nuclear physicists and IT experts, not a man I’d want to spend two minutes in a queue with, let alone Valentine’s Day.
‘Oh, you’re wearing white,’ one of The Frosties commented one morning as we walked to the ski lift, scrutinising the ski jacket I’d bought for £10 on eBay. ‘you’re brave, it’s such an unforgiving colour.’
Admittedly, I looked like a butter ball. Layers of warm wool clothing, salopettes that were too tight and a jacket that was too big made me look twice the size I am: more chunky monkey than Bond girl.
I wasn’t necessarily seeking romance in Sauze d’Oulx. I love meeting new friends, but I’m not desperate for a relationship. Now 58, I’ve been single since my last break-up in 2016 and happily so, but I’m certainly not averse to meeting someone new if the opportunity presents itself.
And while Spice is a social holiday group, not a singles club, the trip is a magnet for solo travellers — surely, as my friend would say, a target-rich environment.
There was an eligible-looking man who flirted with me all week, only to reveal under questioning at dinner on the final night that he’d been married for 30 years.
‘There’s no eye candy here,’ one fellow female complained, sotto
voce, at the welcome meeting. Another, emboldened by several glasses of Piemonte, made me laugh. ‘I’m nearly 50, but I’m full of life so when I meet a man, I want to be up all night with him. Gimme gimme gimme a man after midnight! There’s not one here who looks as if he could take the pace.’
I did meet some attractive men. There was the hilarious retired TV exec I sat next to on the plane, who brimmed with brilliant celebrity gossip; my (cliché alert!) turbo-tanned instructor Robbie, half-Italian, half-Australian; and the Sicilian owner of a pretty restaurant in the cobbled old town where I dined alone — oh joy! — one evening on homemade penne all’arrabbiata.
So there were a few diamonds in the dust, but for the most part I met men who looked as if they lived with their mothers and collected Marvel comics.
I should admit that skiing doesn’t always bring out the best in me.
I’ve been on eight ski trips over 35 years, sometimes with a decade’s gap, usually with my friend Sally, sometimes the two of us in a bigger group. She skis like a gliding goddess: I fall over a lot. Often, these pratfalls can be blamed on my lack of technique, sometimes I’m just accidentprone, the Mr Bean of the pistes.
The toggle on my jacket once got caught on a chair lift handle, for example, and as I tried to break free, I was pulled to the ground face first.
Being unfit doesn’t help. To go from doing virtually no exercise at home to hurtling down mountains for five hours at a top speed of 35 mph takes stamina.
My leg muscles stung beyond words after a couple of hours in ski boots the size of a Smart car. I was either too hot or too cold, and invariably left some crucial item in my hotel room (gloves, goggles, painkillers) or lost something valuable on the slopes (phone, £150 ski pass, sunglasses).
I daren’t wear my spectacles when I’m skiing in case I break or lose them, so I couldn’t read a menu at lunchtime or, more critically, a piste map.
Most importantly, I skied in a permanent state of terror, anticipating all the ways in which life would be impossible if I broke a limb — couldn’t walk the dog; drive to visit my 81-year-old mum or get to work.
Walking round Sauze town noticing that one in every 20 people had their arm or leg in
plaster or a sling only stoked my unease, reminding me of the adage: ‘Skiing is the only sport where you spend an arm and a leg to break an arm and a leg.’
One Spice member, a lovely single woman joining the group for the first time, injured her knee on the third day and, after an expensive visit to the town’s privately run trauma centre, had to go home early.
There were other injuries: a 4pm cuppa with cake in the hotel bar each day yielded horror stories of sprains, cuts and tears.
Existing health problems — arthritis, sciatica and dodgy knees — were exacerbated by hurling ourselves down icy mountainsides on what were, effectively, a couple of tea trays fixed to our feet.
There were moments of joy, such as skiing down a wide, gentle piste with virtually nobody else around, under a blue sky and with the sun on my face.
And there were triumphs in Robbie’s group skiing lessons. The greatest of these was skiing down a steep, narrow slope covered in ice and giant bumps, never once falling, adrenaline and relief surging through me when I reached the bottom.
‘ Bravo, Mandy!’ Robbie cried. ‘See! You just need more confidence.’
Of course, skiing holidays are meant to be convivial. Fondue For One isn’t a thing: skiers flock to the mountains with friends and family or, in the case of Spice, with 50 fellow travellers to hang out in a group.
On my trip, I’d estimate there were about 30 women and 20 men. Several married couples on the ski trip met through Spice.
With 12,000 members nationwide, Spice offers people the opportunity to network and socialise if they’re new to an area or want to make more friends.
Sadly, ‘the UK’s friendliest club’ wasn’t particularly friendly for me.
In truth, I’m not the sort who joins Spice anyway. Solitary by nature, I’m happy with my own company and generally avoid crowds and big groups. That said, I’d have preferred not to ski on my own most days because I couldn’t find a group to join after morning class.
Suddenly, it was 1978 again and I was the lumpen schoolgirl not picked for netball. ‘I wonder if I could ski with you and your group tomorrow?’ I asked a man who seemed friendly.
‘Of course, you’ll be very welcome, won’t she?’ he said, turning to his friend, one of The Frosties. The long pause that followed spoke volumes.
‘Errr, OK,’ she said awkwardly. ‘But can you ski?’ Clearly, she was less than enthusiastic about having The Biggest Liability on her team, so I decided it was best to ski alone again the following day.
I did my best to enjoy the après ski, downing toffee vodka shots and Aperol Spritzes with the gang. But I am hard of hearing, so a packed bar of 100 well-oiled revellers with a DJ on noisy decks felt like Room 101.
After half an hour of ‘pardon?’, ‘I’m sorry, I missed that’ and ‘what did you say?’, I returned to the peace of the hotel.
MY TRIP taught me several things, chiefly that, because of the fear of injury, my skiing days are over. I left my white ski jacket in my hotel room, in case the cleaner could use it.
It reminded me, too, that travelling alone, without a group, suits me best. Last year I went to Botswana, Jordan, India and Qatar on my own and relished every moment.
More than one in six people now goes on solo holidays, and that number continues to rise, according to a recent ABTA survey. I’m delighted to be part of that growing trend, and am planning a summer train trip from Moscow to Vladivostok across Siberia on one of the world’s longest rail journeys. Yes, I’ll be travelling alone. My Spice trip yielded neither lifelong friends nor romance. So my Valentine’s Day this week will be spent working, dog walking and downing an M&S meal deal for one, with wine.
I’ll light the wood burner and candles then settle in to watch TV or read a book.
No red roses, no syrupy card, no surprise tickets to Vienna; just me and the dog. And it will be bliss.
SPICE Holidays is running its next Learn to Ski In Luxury trip, from March 14-21, 2020, at The Premier Luxury Mountain Resort in Bansko, Bulgaria. From £749 (spiceuk.com).