Ski Notley

Ski Notley - Notley High School & Braintree Sixth Form's dedicated ski site! SkiNotley is the dedicated website for Notley High School’s annual ski trip.

It contains photos of previous trips, trip information and updates from the trip. Background

Since 2003, staff at Notley High have taken groups of our students to the Ski Amadé group of resorts near Salzburg in Austria. This allows the group to stay in one hotel but use their ski pass in many different areas throughout the region and gives us the flexibility to give our students the widest possib

le experience of skiing conditions. Trip Organisation

Departing by coach on a Friday we arrive in resort on the Saturday and allow the students to settle into the hotel. We then take them to Ski Fit to collect their rented boots, skis and poles for the week. From Sunday to Friday we try to get onto the slopes as early as possible (nice early breakfasts!) and spend at least 6 hours skiing, weather permitting, with an hour break for lunch. After we return to the hotel to change and eat our evening meal, the students are provided with an evening activity, which in previous years has included tobogganing, tubing, bowling, swimming, quizzes and a disco. On the Thursday evening the instructors present each student with their ski grade for the week. Friday is our last day on the slopes so we finish a few hours early and then return our ski gear. Once back at the hotel we have our evening meal, board the coach and return to England. Another trip – done!

08/05/2024

Ok, ski trip will be here much sooner than you think!
Plenty of time to get to the Dry Slope or Indoor Snow Slope for some lessons or just practice.

08/03/2024

Right here goes – the most contentious issue. As it is every trip. Literally, every one. Regardless of what hotel we stay at, although the issues vary.

The Evening Meal

(Cue thunder rolls and lightning. Perhaps there is a demonic cackle in the distance).

Comments here, where people did comment, were fairly negative, and centred around two issues: The portion sizes, and what was served.

There’s a bit of a correlation between the two, to be honest, and also perhaps a bit of a misunderstanding.

From long and bitter (no pun intended) experience, hotels that cater to the youth/school group market know that teenagers of every nationality aren’t always the most adventurous gastronomically. So they do tend to provide food that is targeted as best they can at their target audience, which could include several schools from different countries in the same sitting. That results in a menu based around a local take on safe options like spaghetti Bolognese, chicken in batter of some description, pasta, and similar. There are usually chips or potatoes. In the case of the hotel we stayed at, there was a salad bar every meal, soup to start and some sort of dessert. They had cake twice this trip due to two birthdays.

Despite this, Waltraud (who runs the hotel) knows that the main meal will be greeted with a response somewhere between “Meh it’s ok” and “I’m not eating that”. So, she doesn’t pile the initial serving plate high because a lot of it just gets wasted. Sometimes, even with that, the waste levels can be criminal. However, the students were always free to take the serving plate/dish up to the kitchen and get more. I told them that personally on several occasions. Students who were vegetarian got their own personal portion and again could have had more. Whilst I could ask for more “up front” for the students, there’s no point if it just goes in the bin.

For the record, the staff were given the same meals and same initial portion sizes as the students, and the new staff members said how surprised they were at the quality and the quantity, and no-one went hungry. I’ve included photos of the meals here - not of all, and not always of the initial serving I have to confess.

This doesn’t help though if your child really didn’t like what was on offer.

I get that. My daughter came on the trip twice and I had to tell her to stop making sick noises and just eat! That was in two different hotels. (She’s a teacher now and I think Karma is visiting a little 🤣🤣🤣…anyway). But I really don’t have a simple solution to it. It’s not practical for any “Youth Hotel” kitchen to provide several choices at each meal for hundreds of students - none of them have - and I genuinely don’t think it would make a huge difference even if they did. There’s definitely a little bit of herd mentality when it comes to the meals, and it only takes one or two to be vocal about how they don’t like it to put the others off.

Regarding what was served, it really was all pretty decent and very edible…at least to adult palettes. Here I think it’s a no-win situation. We’ve had similar feedback at every hotel we have stayed in.

Really. Every one.

Also, I’ve photographed school proms where the food was so good I would have genuinely served it at a wedding, and there were still complaints from the students about how they were going to get McDonalds/Dominos on the way home because the food was “disgusting”. Some of it is down to just really not liking something specific at a meal (unavoidable) and some is just not liking anything that isn’t familiar (see the post about the restaurant on the slopes, where there WAS a huge choice). Some students gave it a really good go at every meal. Some literally refused to touch anything, including the salad bar, that was served at any meal. Most liked some meals more than others and ate something most of the time.

I am aware that some students went to their rooms afterwards to fill up on snacks.

I’m aware that’s not ideal and I would rather they didn’t.

I don’t think it will ever stop though.

08/03/2024

Food on the Slopes

We had a few comments about some students struggling to find things that they wanted to eat at lunchtime in the restaurants on the slopes.

A bit of background…

The restaurants are virtually in a monopoly situation with regard to our ski trip’s students and staff, either because they are they only one available that can accommodate large groups (like Zauchensee), or they are in the ideal “gathering” location (like Zauchensee and Flachau), or in the case of Flachauwinkle because they had to be booked in advance to get everyone a seat. Basically, students have to choose from what is on the menu, unless they want to bring rolls from the hotel and eat them outside.

As a result, the restaurants could choose to severely limit the menu and charge usury prices.

But they don’t.

They aren’t spectacularly cheap, but they aren’t ridiculous, and they offer a surprisingly decent selection of food, even now catering reasonably well to vegetarians and vegans, which is a step-change from the trips in the mid 2010s. I photographed the “sit down” menus from Zauchensee, Flachauwinkle and Flachau so you can see what was on offer, and for price comparisons. Flachau did have a self-service counter as well, selling a selection of hot dogs, burgers etc, and the Ötzibar served pizzas. A lot of the students used those instead of the more formal restaurant. All the menus that weren’t already bilingual were available in English on request, all the waiting staff were really friendly and spoke great English, and if the worst came to the worst there was always Google translate which provides a live translation from a mobile phone's camera.

Unfortunately, teenagers being teenagers, even though there were plenty of relatively familiar options like burgers, chicken wings, pizzas, hot dogs and baked potatoes, some didn’t find out what the items on the menu were or simply didn’t want to eat unfamiliar foods. Apparently some defaulted to eating the ubiquitous “pommes” – plates of chips. That isn’t remotely unique to this trip by the way.

Here I honestly just don’t have a solution.

Austrian restaurants serve Austrian food, and there are no English-focussed restaurants on the slopes. You obviously can’t bring your own food into a restaurant, especially ones that are really busy, as they all were, and none of the students wanted to eat a packed lunch outside. Even if there were alternative restaurants in a particular resort, culture and basic economics means they tend to all serve very similar meals. Moreover, we can’t have students all eating in different places anyway, as they have to be supervised at lunch, we only have so many staff, they want to see/talk to their friends who might be in a different ski group, and we use the opportunity to move the groups around if necessary.

I’m afraid that when in a foreign country, especially when you don't speak the language, it comes down to being self-reliant enough to use technology, to ask staff (ours or the restaurant’s) for help, to ask for an English menu if necessary, and then perhaps step a little out of your food comfort zone.

Or you end up with a plate of chips.

Which isn’t really enough.

08/03/2024

Ski Trip Feedback Questions

Breakfast

The comments here were centred around perceived lack of choice, lack of fruit, only being allowed one small roll, no cooked eggs, no toast and lack/unfamiliarity of the cereals.

Here I have to take issue a little with some of what seems to have filtered back home I’m afraid, and I regret that I didn't photograph the setup.

There absolutely was a decent variety of food available at breakfast.

Every morning there was a large basket of fresh rolls, several different types of speciality bread, cheese (both sliced and “Dairylea Triangle-esque” types), a variety of cold meat and pastes, a big basket of fresh fruit, tinned fruit, yoghurt, cereal (granola, and cornflakes, both plain and chocolate), milk (hot and cold), squash, tea and coffee.

It is correct that there were no eggs or toast – there are no staff in the morning to make cooked breakfasts, and toast has too much potential to cause issues with the fire alarms, let alone the fact that the speciality continental bread isn’t really toast-friendly.

None of it was remotely limited in quantity - everyone could eat as much as they liked.

In fact, the students were told they could make extra rolls to take up the slopes with them if they wanted, along with the bottle of drink and a snack-bar of some description that was provided: this was part of the “full board” package.

Obviously, there wasn’t an unlimited amount of time for breakfast since we had to get up the slopes before they were packed solid, but they always had at least 30-40 minutes. More than enough time to eat as much as would be sensible.

For next time (if we get the trip off the ground!) however, I’d be fine with students bringing some small variety pack cereals down to breakfast if they honestly can’t face anything apart from familiar UK cereals. I think that’s a reasonable concession, as they really do need to eat a decent breakfast before skiing. Bringing large boxes of cereals that would have to be returned to their rooms and stored though isn’t practical – it would need to be the small 200g-ish “single shot” ones. Provided they are sensible with them, I don’t see a problem.

08/03/2024

Ski Trip Feedback Questions

This time Food. Just in general really.

There were several comments about the food on the trip, mostly (but not exclusively) negative and mostly about the evening meal, but also about breakfast, the restaurants on the slopes and opportunities to eat on the journeys. So, I’ll try to address the major issues (in no particular order) over a few posts or it will be too unwieldy.

Firstly, requests to stop at Burger King or McDonalds on the journeys.

Ok – I get that some students (and staff too!) love these fast-food outlets and their idea of heaven would be for us to stop at service stations that have them.

However, even ignoring the whole “experience a different culture” aspect of the trip, there is no possibility whatsoever that we can dictate to the drivers which route they take or where they stop, as it’s all down to their legally mandated maximum driving hours and breaks. Even if we could, there’s no guarantee that they would be open. There was actually a Burger King at Munich where we stopped for breakfast, but it didn’t open until after we were leaving, and hanging around waiting for it just isn’t an option, again due to the constraints of maximum driving hours. There was plenty of “real” food available, including familiar cooked breakfast items like scrambled/fried eggs etc, and the digital menu/ordering system was in several languages.

On the journey back, there is no sense in making more than one fairly brief stop in the late evening to use the facilities, before driving through the night. Everyone has eaten just before we board the coach to leave at 6pm, and we have to get to the port in plenty of time for the ferry and before the driver’s hours run out. We were at the port at 8am, so making a detour just to eat breakfast would have meant we’d have had to wake everyone up stupidly early, and I’m sure they’d rather have slept. The students all had the opportunity to buy food for the journey the day before and they were on the ferry by 10am with access to the food courts. Being on DFDS meant they even got a free food voucher.

08/03/2024

Following the feedback forms from parents/carers/students, a few things have come up repeatedly, so I'm going to answer them here, then update the FAQ on the site. Hope this helps...

Chris Rowe (Geek)

First off - Flying

--------------------------------------

Ski Trip Frequently Asked Question: Could we not fly instead of using a coach?

I completely understand this question. The coach journeys are always the low-points of the trip - long, boring, not especially comfortable and you might have to share a double seat with someone you don’t know. Even with a good coach and great drivers (both of which we had this year thanks to Bayliss Executive Travel) there’s a limit to how enjoyable they can be made.

So why don’t we fly?

Honestly, we have looked at the possibility in the past, but the negatives far outweigh the one positive of avoiding the two long journeys.

Firstly, there’s the cost and logistics of the flights themselves.
A coach is the same price no matter how full or empty, so there are price breaks for bringing more students. With flying, there is rarely this economy of scale - we’d have to budget the same for every student and member of staff individually. It’s also very difficult to block book potentially 40-50 seats on the same airline when you need fixed dates, especially if you want to use budget airlines to keep the cost to something sensible - and it's still expensive even then. In addition, we have to factor in checked luggage for everyone, which would severely restrict how much anyone could take and anyone bringing their own gear would struggle. The trip is already expensive, and the cost of flying alone would begin to make the cost prohibitive for many more students.

None of that is totally insurmountable however, and if it was purely down to cost of flying I might even consider it.

But…

…it leaves us with no dedicated method of transport once in Austria. And that’s a big issue.

It means hiring a transfer coach to get all of us and our luggage to our hotel, and again to get us back to the airport at the end of the trip.

We would have to hire a local bus to get us to and from the slopes every day, meaning more expense and completely inflexible times of pickup in the morning and afternoon. And no opportunity to “stop off” in Altenmarkt for shopping or to pick up supplies such as items from the Pharmacy, or to swap out/replace equipment.

If we stayed in Altenmarkt itself (which we have done in the past, but with a coach) it’s quite a lot more expensive and we are really limited to one skiing area unless we hire daily transport to the slopes. We would definitely have to hire transport to the Lucky Flitzer which is in Flachau, and even the swimming pool in Altenmarkt is also unlikely to be walking distance unless we got incredibly lucky with the hotel.

Staying in Flachau itself would mean we could forego the daily transport, and we could perhaps walk to the Flitzer depending on which hotel we could book, but again it would limit us to skiing in one area, regardless of the snow conditions and it would be orders of magnitude more expensive, especially over half-term.

So, whilst I really do get how much of a pain the coach journey can be (and after 17 trips I REALLY do!), unfortunately it’s just not economically viable, nor especially practical regardless of budget, for us to fly to a European ski destination.

Sorry.

We do at least split up the journey out with the ferry and a decent breakfast stop, although that’s not practical on the return leg though as we travel through the night and get to the port early

Best bring a pillow and a movie or several I’m afraid. 😊

07/03/2024

Photos from Ski Notley 2024

Just to let you know that all the photos from the recent ski trip are available online to view/download now.

They are available in medium resolution (2400px max) on the Ski Notley website at

https://www.skinotley.co.uk/photos/austria-2024

but if you prefer, the master shots are on OneDrive at

https://1drv.ms/f/s!Av8mbqrYx1srgdx83GpvlN95WK9YEw?e=BzwvTW

(Make sure you do select “download” though, as using right click>Save as doesn’t give you the full resolution photo.)

Enjoy!

Chris Rowe (Geek)

PS If you happen to have any photos of your own that you want to share, you can always email me and I’ll add them!

04/03/2024

The Will Myers Award 2024

With the blessing of his family, we have instituted the Will Myers Award in his memory, to be given to the most outstanding student on each ski trip. That can mean anything – skiing ability, progress, resilience, kindness – whatever makes them really stand out.

The first award was presented in 2024 to Rhiannon Foster in Year 11. Miss Trafford said it best. “She is wonderfully kind, helping people throughout the trip, both on the slopes and off them. She was in the top group but was never cocky or arrogant about it and was always supportive of others.” That sums up perfectly what Will was like as an instructor. Kind, helpful, supportive, skilful but never arrogant. And by coincidence Rhiannon was taught by Will in 2020.

From Lily, our Head Ski Guide “I was really impressed with her skiing when I skied with top group. You would never think she had only had 1 week on snow before! Will did good”. He did. He always did.

We hope he would approve.

Chris Rowe (Geek),Trip Leader

-------------------------------

Her citation:

Dearest Rhiannon,

We are so honoured for you to receive this first ever Will Myers Award.

We will always be sad that Will did not get to teach you and the other Notley students on your 2024 trip, but we are so pleased that he first taught you as a beginner back in 2020.

We know that Will would have been so proud of the progress that you have made since then, not just as a skier but also in your care and support for others.

Thank you for embodying the values that Will believed in and may you continue to take these forward with you.

With best wishes

From the Myers family

28/02/2024

Our Friend, Will Myers

On Sunday we received the devastating news that our friend and long-term Ski Notley instructor Will Myers had passed away after a short illness.

Will was a huge part of Ski Notley over the best part of the last decade. Any of you who knew him and were taught by him will know just how big.

In 2015, Dave and Jen, our other long-term ski guides, were looking for another person to help with our annual school trip, and recommended their colleague Will. “Are you sure he will fit in?” we asked. “Absolutely” was the reply.

So…Will came on board.

Right from the off, he was the missing jigsaw piece for our puzzle.

Will knew more about skiing than most of us will ever learn. More importantly, he knew how to pass his knowledge on to our students. That’s not a given. Plenty of top-class skiers have no clue how to teach. Will had that gift.

Well over a hundred of our students owe their “ski legs” to Will.

He should have been skiing with us in 2024. He should have been coaching the beginners in their initial tentative runs, and watching them blossom over the week into confident, proficient skiers through his advice and guidance. Like he always did. He was an awesome coach. And I don’t use that word lightly.

But the universe intervened. We learned that he had pulled out from the trip just a few short days before we were supposed to leave. We knew he must have been ill to not come with us – he had been asking me about the trip for almost a year – but we didn’t know how ill.

Will passed away while we were on the trip.

Personally, I will miss his presence. I will miss him skiing past my camera, asking to see the photos, and then bemoaning his own technique. It was always great. It was never good enough for him.
I genuinely hope that wherever he is, the powder is deep, the pistes are freshly prepared, and he has all the time he needs to get his knees that little bit closer to the floor in the turns. Just one more run…

With the blessing of his family, we will be instituting the annual Will Myers Award in his memory, to be given to the most outstanding student on each trip. That can mean anything – skiing ability, progress, resilience, kindness – whatever makes them really stand out.

We hope he would approve.

Chris Rowe (Geek)

24/02/2024

Home!

The suitcase is soon to be unpacked, the boots and the cat ears on my skid lid are about to get a good old drying off, and I have a glass of something to drink. Let's assume it's orange juice.

Before I feed the cats and then fall asleep in the bath, I would just like to thank everyone once again for making Ski Notley 2024 what I hope was a success.

The ski company SET, the coach company and their drivers, the hotel staff, our wonderful instructors (especially Lily Brown who stepped in as Head Ski Guide at the last minute and did an exemplary job), and our amazing school staff and their partners who generously allowed them to come, all the parents and carers…

…and most of all the students.

They really were an absolute credit to themselves, the school and their families. Everyone connected with them should be bursting with pride. I would be honoured to take them up a hill and throw them off on sticks again in a heartbeat.

There will be a feedback form coming out to all students and their families as soon as my brain isn’t made of clotted cream. If you could spare me five minutes to give the trip an honest appraisal (positive or negative – I genuinely do want to know what you liked and didn’t) I’d really appreciate it. I’ll make it so you can complete it anonymously if you prefer.

I won’t bang on any more now as I’m essentially typing with my nose at this point.

But thank you. All of you.

It’s all been rather lovely.

Geek and Team…Over and Out.

Address

Notley High School & Braintree Sixth Form
Braintree
CM71WY

Telephone

+441376556369

Website

http://www.skinotley.co.uk/

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