It was late afternoon on Saturday 4th February when 5 members of staff (Miss Wall, Mrs Wallace, Miss French, Mrs Brown, and Mr Koe), with approximately 50 students from years 8, 9 and 10, were ready  to leave from Rugby High for Prato Nevoso, Italy.

We arrived at Dover at about 9:00 and, after passing through security and border control, we had some free time at the service station, as our ferry was at 22:05. When we arrived at Calais at about 00:35 (different time zone), we took our seats on the coach for another 8 hours before stopping at another service station for breakfast. We drove on for a bit more before going through a really long tunnel to officially be in Italy. When we arrived at the resort, we had to try on our skis, before going back to the hotel for dinner.

Monday was the first day of skiing. We were split into 5 groups: 3 beginners, intermediate and advanced, where we all did different things. The day was surprisingly quite warm and sunny. After skiing, we took part in the evening activities which were snow tubing and swimming. On Wednesday, we went to the pizzeria. It was my first time having pizza with chips on top of it, and I definitely prefer the English pizzas.

Friday was the last day of skiing and we started off as normal, but midway we had a race with ski presentations afterwards. We then walked all the way to the ski shop to return our skis (during the trip, we did a lot of walking, especially if you were in the lowest beginner group, who weren’t quite ready to ski back to the hotel, and most of it was uphill, whilst carrying their skis). We had the afternoon to relax and then we set off for the journey home.

It was, as a whole, a very good trip and, as well as it being fun, I also think that it has made us all fitter due to the amount of exercise we did, especially if we dropped a piece of clothing or equipment, because Mrs Wallace gave us a forfeit of 15 jumping star jumps, 15 burpees and 15 jumping squats. Everyone’s skiing improved and even the people who had never skied before ended up going up the intermediate slopes.

Lucy Wang, 9G