I spent the first half-hour of snowboarding in a mood. The snow was too cold to lie in comfortably, unlike the other days. I'd been expecting it to be just as painfully hot so I'd left my hat behind and now my head was cold. Why did I have to do these exercises, why don't you understand that if I'm concentrating on swinging my arm around, I can't concentrate on my feet and I will crash. But then we were allowed to pretty much just go, swooping and turning all the...

More snowboarding. Sam had taken the day off with injuries. We started with some exercises. Falling leaf with hands on hips or behind backs. Nose-down and brake with a snowball balanced on the back of each hand. When we got to the flatter bit, Cherry and I worked on our turns and I began to feel comfortable with them. I was starting to link them, starting to build up speed and starting to enjoy the snowboarding. This left the instructor free to help out Helen who...

I was such a zombie on Tuesday. I didn't bother with breakfast. We went up the Penkenbahn again, we were taken to the blue run again and we did some more exercises, designed to get us used to controlling the board. I was beginning to get comfortable with the thing, beginning to gain confidence and starting to turn a little bit. The instructor tried getting us to touch our legs as we turned but the moment I tried thinking about hands and knees instead of concentra...

On Monday I had breakfast of semmel and apple juice, got dressed, smeared on some suncream and ran for the Strass. I handed over my voucher and apparently I was the one they were waiting for, because we immediately set off back up the Penkenbahn. Once up at the middle station, we had a long wait. An instructor gave out name tags, which had our lesson dates on. I had been supposed to start the day before but they'd kept hold of my tag and they just amended the da...

In the morning I did indeed have a slow start and was down at the Europahaus again by about ten. They were open but the office wasn't because the person who had the key hadn't turned up. The nice Irishman behind the counter told me to come back in half an hour so I went to the station, with the intention of booking a ticket for the steam train on Friday. The steam train doesn't run until May. I went back. I was presented with a packet of vouchers and I had a whit...