I considered going to the Altitude Festival this year – for obvious reasons, it’s a good thing I never quite made up my mind to do it. There’s nothing seasonal about this but since we can’t travel at the moment, let’s relive old travel stories.
This is Altitude 2010, my first ever visit to the festival and my first ever snowsports holiday. It’s a comedy festival – snowsports by day (a roughly equal mix of skiers and snowboarders to judge by the cheers each night) and laughs by night, with some pretty big names dropping by. Everyone wants to do Altitude. Nowadays it’s very comfortably settled in Mayrhofen in western Austria, with three shows a day – the afternoon laid-back show in the sports bar, the big gala in the evening and the late-night chaos which is sometimes more of a snow party event. You either buy a wristband valid for the whole event or a daily one.
But when I first went, in 2010, Altitude was still in its infancy. It was only its second or third year and it happened in Méribel in the French Alps. It was like the Edinburgh Fringe back then, in that there were smaller shows in any space you could fit a comedian and a few audiants into. I bought a five-show pass which allowed me my choice of five tickets and I topped it up with quite a lot of others. In fact, I saw eight shows in all.
Getting to Méribel is a tiny bit tricky. There’s no really convenient airport or connection so I opted for the Eurostar. They operate a special ski train in winter. My main memories of it are that it wasn’t as luxurious as I’d expected and a lot of luxury wears off after you’ve been sitting on a train for seven hours. I got off at Moutiers and from there took a coach shuttle to Méribel. Simple enough but fairly time-consuming and kind of boring. I remember buying Will Young’s greatest hits on CD and the Yeah Yous to put on my iPod for the journey.
I stayed at a big wooden hotel in the village centre although until I looked up the details two days ago I’d have sworn I just had a room in a chalet. I guess it’s all much the same. Nice big comfy wooden room accessed by the side stairs from the bar with excellent views over the village centre. It was expensive as hell but it couldn’t have been more convenient.
I arrived and just had time to dump my luggage before running down to the Parc Olympique to pick up my tickets and get to the first show, which was the Opening Gala, featuring pretty much everyone who was appearing in the entire festival.
Comedy-wise, I took a few things from that festival. I discovered Mickey Flanagan who replaced Rich Hall. I took to chasing Rich Hall (ended up in Zürich the following May) because the universe owed me a chance to actually get to see him. I fell for Nick Doody who sang his Clown Song in fluent and perfect but very nervous French. I gained a new respect for Al Murray for his French – I mean, seeing the Pub Landlord perform in French is quite a thing. I discovered the Comedy Store improv folks. Abandoman. Andrew Maxwell, big cheese behind Altitude. Marcus Brigstocke, co-big cheese behind Altitude. Craig Campbell and his shorts.
On the last full day, there was a pool party, although I think it was a VIP/invite-only event that the likes of me couldn’t have got into even if I’d brought my swimming stuff. That pool should be absolutely freezing but it’s steaming so I bet it’s pretty toasty in there.. I can’t recognise anyone famous in the water. I recognise one of the festival directors but he’s not famous. And he’s not in the water.
That was my evenings. By day I snowboarded. I’d practised a few times at a local dry slope and decided I definitely needed lessons in Méribel, partly because I wasn’t very good, partly because I knew doing it on snow would be very different and partly because I had no idea how I was supposed to know where to go. What is a blue run? How do I know where it is or where to go? Lessons meant a teacher which meant someone who knew how the systems worked.
I’m not a natural snowboarder. I came to it too late in life, after I’d acquired that fear for my life that kids just don’t have. I can slide reasonably well on my heel edge but I am going to fall and die if I try turning. That meant there was a limit to what I could be taught.
Part of our daily route was a path – well, a path in summer – that was covered in ice. Ice isn’t very easy to snowboard on, especially for a beginner and it was far too narrow for someone who needs a lot of space and time to make a turn. I fell over on that path one day -backwards and downhill. To this day I remain convinced I got concussion from that fall and I’m reasonably sure I’d be dead if I hadn’t been wearing a helmet. You can only imagine the noise a plastic helmet makes when it hits ice after a fall of nearly six feet if your head is inside said helmet.
I didn’t come back from Méribel an expert snowboarder. I went back to Altitude in 2012 and 2013, by which time it had moved to Mayrhofen, and had lessons all over again. Those of you who know me in real life will have heard – lots of times – the story about the … umm… ardent young gentleman who attached himself to me in 2013. Very young gentleman. I jumped off a mountain to escape his unwanted (and borderline illegal) advances.
Maybe I’ll go to Altitude again in 2021. Maybe I won’t have snowboarding lessons. Maybe I’ll try skiing. Maybe I’ll get a basic paragliding licence – I mean, if I’m too scared to be able to learn to slide, obviously I’ll be brave enough to learn to leap off a mountain on my own, right?
If you’d like to see me blog about learning to paraglide in 2021, throw a couple of pennies in my Ko-fi here to go towards my paragliding licence fund.
I blog every Monday and Thursday – Thursday’s blog is the start of me retelling my stories from my year studying in Switzerland in 2005-2006 and we’re going to Zermatt on a really cold day so come back if you’d like to see how cold it gets up the Matterhorn.