The adventures at the dreaded Terminal 5!

Keith and I were lucky enough to have been whisked away to Zermatt in Switzerland last week; it was as a result of Keith’s hard work over the last 3 months in achieving the best sales for his division for the winter quarter!

As you can gather from the title, we were scheduled to fly from Heathrow’s Terminal 5 early on the Sunday morning. As you would expect this did not happen! We waited around drinking a lot of coffee whilst we waited for our (Brilliant) organisers Bill and Helen to work their magic and find an alternative flight. As it happened no further flights were available to Geneva that day and considering that there were actually 36 of us it would have been nigh on impossible to have arranged anything at such short notice. Instead of heading to Geneva that afternoon we were taken to Bray and The Belgium Arms pub and restaurant where a fantastic Champagne reception awaited us followed by a delicious 3 course lunch, considering we should have been on our way to Geneva we thought we were doing pretty well! I have always wanted to visit Bray due to this being the home of The Fat Duck (The highest awarded restaurant in the country), a few of my colleagues and myself have often spoken about visiting The Fat Duck and hopefully now I have visited the area I can spur the others on, Its very beautiful!

After an ‘interesting’ nights sleep (at what felt like) the end of the airport run way, we were up and out by 4am and on our way to Terminal 5! It was an hair raising trip, I think our taxi driver must have had quite a few cups of very strong, sweet coffee as he was driving as though someone was chasing him!!! We arrived in one piece and then walked into Terminal 5 to be greeted firstly by a lot of people sleeping on the floors with mats and blankets that had been issued by BA. They had been there all night due to their flights being cancelled. I immediately felt very guilty for complaining about the noise of the plains from our hotel room. At this point we also noticed that there were security guards on all the doors leading into the terminal and we now understand this was in an attempt to stop any more photographers and reporters. It didn’t work as there were pictures of the chaos in most of the papers that morning….. Oh and our 6:30am flight was cancelled again!

After a few more cups of coffee and a lot of sitting on the floor we were finally able to check in at around 12:30pm for our 2:15pm flight, after a few more delays we took off at around 3pm and were just relieved to be finally heading for the slopes. This being now over 31 hours late!!! The bonus to this was that our organisers were able to extend the holiday in Zermatt by one day so this meant that we did not miss out on our skiing and boarding time.

Once we arrived at Geneva all the bags came off the carousel except 1 and yep you’ve guessed it, the one that was missing was ours! After registering this as missing (and reading that morning that only 1 in 10 lost bags were ever reaching their destination, we were not optimistic we would ever see it again!), we then quickly jumped onto the bus and headed for Zermatt. 2 ½ hours later we arrived at Zermatt and then jumped into 4 awaiting electric (very eco-friendly) taxis and were driven to a very interesting and traditional restaurant where we were served local alpine dishes in a very ‘qwerky’ setting, a real experience and great fun! We were all well and truly ready for our beds by the time the evening was over, so we gradually all headed to the Best Western Hotel Butterfly, to check in and put our head down for the night.

The skiing in Zermatt was fantastic, although this was only my third time skiing it was easily the best conditions I’ve ever experienced. There was snow on the Tuesday afternoon, it was almost magical- with the snow flakes the size of a 50p piece! My apprehensive snow ploughing turned into fairly confident parallel skiing by the last day, but I held the prize for taking the highest amount of falls and I’ve got the bruises to prove it!

The Wednesday morning was a very memorable time for all in our group. Our instructor decided to take myself, Wendy, Jane and Dawn over to another mountain that morning. Whilst there we joined teams with another small group and hopped on the T-bar lift to head up to the top of the Blue run for a leisurely ski down. The first time (using the T-Bar lift) was fine and we all managed to get up in one piece with a fantastic wide sloped ski down, all was looking promising. On the second trip the wind started to pick up and as soon as we were all on the lift a full blown blizzard set in. Bei, Goosty. The icy cold wind and the blustery conditions were making us all a little apprehensive, then as if from nowhere a gust of icy wind came along at the same time that my ski’s hit a random lump of snow and I came off! Now we were in a predicament, as my instructor had also come off leaving the 8 students at the top of the mountain waiting for us to join them…..

After some discussion, we agreed that Goosty must walk up the mountain to see if he could reach the others. So he removed one ski and slowly made his way up the slope. At this point I remembered a conversation that I had had with Jane the day before, where she had spoken to her daughter one day whilst learning to ski and asked her “what do you do when you are facing down a slope and you are scared?” her reply was “I just sing mummy” ! So I sang! It could have only have been 10 minutes that I was standing on my own in the middle of this blizzard but it did feel like a lot longer.

Thankfully, the others had decided to slowly make their way down the slope and met up with Goosty before he had walked too far. For me to see the rest of the team coming down the slope was like something out of “War of the Worlds”. Through the haze of the blizzard I could make out my fellow skiers (with Goosty in front) slowly meandering down the run – magically being followed by the lights of a huge snow plough, what a sight for sore eyes!!!

The next day our group was asked to escort a child each up to the top of the slope on the chair lift, the little girl who sat with me was called Caroline. On asking her if she had been skiing for long she told me that this was her third week in total and that she was 5 and ½ years old. I explained that it was also my third week and that would put us at a similar standard. That being not beginners but not yet intermediates – so she then told me that we were then classed as “Middlers” and after another three weeks of skiing we would then be “Grown ups !”

All in all a fantastic holiday was had by everyone, and both Keith and I met some fantastic people. Hopefully we will meet you all again guys – Jane (Top tip regarding the singing, really enjoyed the walk too), Steve (the dongle man), Wendy (you were great company thank you), Phil (aka Michael Cane - “I just told you to blow the b****y doors off”) , Dawn (thanks for the contact lense solution, you were a life saver), Mike, Tina, Andrew, Andrea, Mark, Sara, Pat, Jim (nice impression of how to toboggan down a slope without a toboggan!), Malcolm (not sure if I can entirely believe everything you said but great stories none the less!), Duncan (nice car), Julie (good luck for the wedding in May guys), Eddie, Sue (awarded top beginner), Helen (thank you for the loan of the lotions and potions – very much appreciated), Georgie (you’re a star) and last but by no means least Brilliant Dynamo Bill, without whom none of the above would have been made possible, many many thanks Bill.

Oh by the way our lost bag did eventually turn up…. One day before we were due to fly home! Well at least it got to us, unlike many others…..