CHILDREN
Skiing is the perfect family holiday.
What else is there that the whole family can
do together, mothers as well as fathers, girls and boys equally?
Or where parents can hand their children over to trained professionals,
knowing they’ll be even happier and safer than with them?
Skiing is both exciting and healthy – a rare combination –
yet one need not be particularly fit or sporty to enjoy it.
YSE is sometimes considered less than child-friendly, because
we don’t have nannies or crèches, or give massive discounts
for children.
It is true that we feel that childcare is something
best left to parents or professionals, not played at by tour operators.
And while a child’s holiday costs us as much as an adult’s,
we don’t see how we could expect those travelling without
children to subsidise those with.
But YSE holidays are actually extremely well-suited to families. Some of our chalets are large, some of them are small. Some are very smart, some give very good value. And some have extra beds for children at half the normal price (though please note that flights are not guaranteed for those occupying extra beds).
Chalets are more relaxing for families than
hotels, where parents are constantly worried that their brood will
upset fellow guests, or self-catering apartments, where most of
someone’s holiday will be spent shopping, cooking and clearing
up.
And, perhaps surprisingly, Val d’Isère
is the ideal family ski resort. It has good snow, short queues,
wide nursery slopes with free lifts, a flat village, free and frequent
buses, very good ski schools, English-speaking instructors, and lots of British youngsters. Where to Ski and Snowboard describes the nursery slopes as ‘95% perfect’.
And although we are keen skiers ourselves, our
best moments are skiing with our children. The only thing we can
imagine that would be even more fun than seeing one’s kids
learn to ski would be to learn with them. A family who started skiing
together would have a ball.
However, although a successful family ski holiday
is the best thing in the world, a lot can go wrong, and it can be
a catastrophe. A ski holiday with children needs to be planned like
an assault on Everest.
Fiona Easdale in our office can advise on most
aspects of ski school and childcare, having brought her own offspring
to Val d’Isère as babies, toddlers and schoolchildren.
She now has a teenager, and is becoming an authority on skiing while communicating in grunts.
Her first tip will be to leave small children
behind! Her second will be to throw money at childcare or kids’
lessons rather than on unnecessarily smart accommodation. We see
children with their own en-suite marble bathroom dumped in group
lessons where they understand little and learn less. They are miserable,
yet a week’s private instruction wouldn’t have cost
much more than the bathroom.
Not that we want you to send us less money, of course, but happy children mean happy parents, and that’s good business!
Ski schools get booked out, so if you require lessons for your children, we strongly recommend that you see the relevant section under Val d’Isère on this website, and telephone or e-mail direct on the day you book your holiday to be sure of a place in a class or to reserve a private instructor. We see family holidays ruined because classes are full and no instructors free.
Private lessons are not very expensive if you
can get a small group of children together, and they make life much
easier. The instructor may meet the children at the chalet, for example.
Snow Fun, Evolution 2 and Oxygène specialise
in looking after English-speaking youngsters during British school
holidays, and can usually include lunch. For more details, please
see our ski school details on the Val d'Isère section of
this website.
Getting children ready for skiing always takes
longer than one imagines. It helps to be in a chalet whence getting
them to the slopes does not require Sherpas. Several of ours are
on the slopes, near the lifts, while none is too inconvenient. The
Sassières are our furthest from the slopes, but have their
own Land Rover.
Young children who need an early supper tend
not to eat it if they’ve just had afternoon tea. Our staff
return to work at around 6pm, and can serve a child-friendly high
tea from 6.30. Some parents ask us to prepare a meal and leave it
for them to pop in the oven earlier than that. If your children
have particular likes or dislikes (don’t they all?), please
fax or e-mail them to us so our staff can buy the right food.
Children's clothes need to
be warmer than adults’, ideally one-piece suits, perhaps sprayed
with silicone. Mittens are warmer than gloves. Your children will
almost certainly need two pairs, at least, because even if they
don’t keep falling over, they’ll probably soak their
mittens throwing snowballs! You can buy disposable hand and footwarmers from the ski shops and chemists.
They also need a selection of clothes and socks or tights to adjust the temperature beneath their suits. A cagoule might be useful, and a balaclava is a must.
Children should wear helmets, which we advise
you to pre-book from the ski-hire shops (and to adjust to their heads). With the helmet they wear
goggles, but once they stop for lunch, they remove the helmet and
goggles, and need a hat or cap and wraparound sunglasses that stay
on.
Children need easily applied sun block (you
can ask the instructor to re-apply it) and lip salve with a sun
screen.
Precision rent out ski clothes, but only have a small selection. If you wish to hire children’s clothes, you need to act fast. Skis and boots are no problem, though we recommend you pre-book equipment if you’re coming during school holidays.
We list the shops with discounts for YSE on
the Val d'Isère section of this website, under Ski Hire.
Sport 2000 is near Le Grizny; there’s an Intersport at La Daille. The rest
are more or less central. Just book – don’t pay, unless you’ve got a better deal than ours. To book skis, tell them the child’s
height. For boots, the shoe size. Doing so merely gives the shop
an idea of what to put aside: they will still fit the equipment
properly on arrival.
Toddlers and babies are very trendy on a ski holiday, but don’t really gain much from it themselves. Most of them never leave the chalet. Those that do wish they hadn’t. Some nearly-three year-olds manage a little skiing, but normally it will involve being carried up the nursery slopes and released to schuss and crash.
In our experience, tobogganing with under-fives usually ends in tears and can be seriously dangerous!
Small children are much more likely to end up at the doctor’s. The dry air, central heating, cold and ultra-violet can all affect them. Chalets have fireplaces, staircases and stone floors they may not be accustomed to. And it is a long journey for the baby, its parents, and anyone near them on the aircraft or coach…
Looking after children is always risky. Most children who get injured do so in their home, with their parents. Nannies are probably less likely to be distracted than parents, but chalets were never intended to be nurseries, are normally less child-friendly than one’s own home, and are difficult to make entirely safe.
For under-threes we think the best for the child and you is someone the child knows, who travels and stays with you. It’s what grandparents were made for.
Alternatively, there is a nanny company called Jelly and Ice-Cream (which used to be known as Valtina), which our guests have found excellent. Although their prices haven’t gone up from last year, for 2009–10 they have changed the format so that you no longer pay per child, you pay per nanny! One nanny can look up to 3 children if all aged over 2 or two children of any age. One half day costs €80 per nanny and one week is €761 (€875 peak rate). The website is www.jellyandice-cream.com, email tina@jellyandice-cream.com, or phone 0033 679 76 95 95. Some of their people are just mums – not trained nannies – but the consensus was that they were very good. Another good company providing nannies in Val d’Isère is T4 nannies – their website is www.t4nanny.com, email mail@t4nanny.com or phone their UK number: 07924 425 885. The Tourist Office has a list of baby-sitters, though they are not vetted.
It is your responsibility to talk to whoever may be arranging your childcare, meet the carer and go around the chalet with them to satisfy yourself that they can keep your children safe in it.
Our chalet girls are always impecunious and sensible, and can often be persuaded to help, but they have their own work, and are rarely experienced with small children. Again, any such arrangement is entirely the parents’ responsibility.
If you bring a buggy, it needs to have big wheels to get across snow. But children are better off indoors: a walk with a buggy along the valley floor inevitably involves half with the child facing into the blinding sun and half with it looking the other way, normally north, into the wind. It is uncomfortable and dangerous. The locals never expose small children for long to freezing air or neat UV. Only we Brits do that! Backpacks and papooses are great until you slip on the ice. And if you were thinking of carrying them on your back while you ski, DON’T! Small children are happiest riding on the bus…
To be brutally honest, we find that parents who can leave their under-threes with Granny in Britain not only keep the children and Granny happy, they also enjoy their own ski holiday.
Three or four-year olds vary
hugely. Some will schuss black runs. Some will sit down and cry.
Most can learn to go up the baby pomas on the nursery slopes and
the basics of skiing. Getting a good instructor is the secret to
a successful holiday. Contact the ski schools as early as possible
to be sure of a place in the right class or, if you are reserving
a private instructor, to get their best person. Fiona knows a number of excellent teachers.
Lessons will only last about two hours each
day, so unless parents of small children have help, most of their
holiday will be devoted to child-minding (please see our comments
in the previous section).
The French section of the Snow Fun ski school (00 33 479 06 19 79) provides the Teddy Bear Club, which cost €30 for 90 minutes in 2008–09 (we await 2009–10 prices). Children seem happier than at the children’s garden of the ESF (0033 479 06 02 34) who, for 2009–10, are charging €39 for two hours.
There are a selection of times available through
the day, particularly for the Teddy Bear Club, but with only six
per class they do get booked solid. These lessons must be booked
in advance.
The Village d’Enfants, Val d’Isère’s
skiing kindergarten (0033 479 40 09 81), is right on the nursery
slopes, where the buses turn. It looks after children, all nationalities, aged three to 13 while they aren’t actually skiing, and has brilliant facilities indoors and out, including a canteen, dormitories and a play area on the snow. The staff have been really
nice thus far, if with slightly Allo Allo! English. It has been
very popular with outgoing children.
Near our chalets Juniper, Jasmine and Jacaranda is Le Petit Poucet (0033 479 06 13 97, www.garderielepetitpoucet.com), a nursery which takes children from three years. The cost is €48 for a day and €35 for half a day (including meals). It will transport children to
and from ESF, EV2 or Snow Fun group ski school classes, but you
pay for the nursery while your child is at ski school as well as
for the actual lessons. It has to be pre-booked, with a certificate
from your GP to say that the child is in good health.
Bigger children, once they’ve
turned five, are much easier. They can now cope with a whole day
on skis, leaving you with the choice of how much time to spend with
them. Some of the ski schools will provide lunch, but need much
persuasion to confirm it for any given date.
Morning or afternoon group lessons (the latter tend to be warmer, cheaper and less subscribed, but obviously your child may be more tired if he or she has skied with you in the morning), can be great with an inspired instructor. Prices for group and private lessons for various ski schools are listed on the Ski School section of this website, attached to the Val d’Isère page. They vary hugely, per child, per hour – and sometimes five children in a private lesson in one school work out cheaper than a group lesson at another.
When you ski with your children, you’ll find lots of long, exciting circuits they can manage, all on green and blue runs. Rapid chairs, such as the new Marmottes six-seater, have made the Verte and similar runs much more child-friendly.
Teenagers who have been perfectly behaved for months at school will be desperate to let off steam. During the day this seems to mean dressing with their crutch around their knees to ride snowboards and glare at anyone over 21.
After dinner, of course, it means sampling every
forbidden pleasure possible out on the town. Under-18s often gain
illicit entry to night clubs, but sometimes don’t. The former
might worry parents, the latter drives teenagers crazy. At night
during school holidays Val d’Isère echoes to smart
voices fortified with chalet wine discussing how to get into Dick’s
through the fire escape! And that’s just the 13-year-olds…
Still, they’re going to test the limits, and Val d’Isère
is a fairly benign place to do so.
If you are bringing youngsters to a top chalet,
please bear in mind that the smarter the chalet the easier it is
to damage and the more the damage costs to put right. We have to
repair any damage for subsequent guests, and have to ask the parents
for the money, which is never easy.
YSE is not anti-children. Far from it, we are
working on the 2022 Winter Olympic squad right now. But we know
how much wear and tear a child can inflict with a plastic cup, let alone
a felt-tip! Toddlers are the worst, but teenagers aren’t far
behind, and the Oxford and Cambridge ski teams were the first children
we had to ban.
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