November 21, 2004          The Sunday Times      
(for original page see  timesonline.co.uk/article )

My dad's a ski-holiday cheapskate:
Mark Hodson and son test out Andorra:
the “no-frills” family ski destination.

Two years ago, I took my son, Callum, to ski in Aspen. He was six years old, it was his first time on snow and he was learning in
one of the world’s best winter-sports resorts. When you begin your skiing career in Aspen, there is only one way to go, and that’
s downhill.

Last winter, Callum was gagging to get back on the slopes. So was I, but unless I won the lottery, Aspen was out of the
question. In fact, almost everywhere was out of the question. It was December when Callum and I decided we wouldn’t survive
the winter without a dose of skiing, and by that time, most packages to the popular Alpine resorts in February half-term were
sold out.

Our choices looked stark: Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia or Andorra, none of which is routinely ranked in the premier league of
pistes. The first three were swiftly ruled out, because they cater almost exclusively to beginners. I would have skied the entire
resort on day one and been bored stiff for the rest of the week. Yes, parents can be selfish too.

So, Andorra it was. We settled on Soldeu, a small resort with a huge network of pistes and a highly rated ski school staffed by
English-speaking instructors. The only downside was the journey: our flight left Gatwick at 5.20am, and was followed by a four-
hour coach transfer. The alarm would be set for 2.45am.

On the plus side, Andorra looked cracking value. This season, over February half-term, a week’s half-board in a four-star hotel,
opposite the lifts, costs £986pp with Thomson. In Val d’Isère, in France, a three-star will set you back £1,482pp. One rung down
the ladder, the difference is just as stark: £662pp, half-board, for a three-star in Soldeu; £1,002pp, B&B, for a two-star in Val d’
Isère.

The skiing seemed interesting, too. Soldeu is no beauty — not so much a village as a string of hotels, bars and shops strung
along a main road — but it’s home to some excellent beginner’s terrain, as well as acres of wide-open blue and red runs that
are perfect for improving intermediates. Now that it’s joined forces with the neighbouring resort of Pas de la Casa, it offers no
fewer than 63 lifts and 125 miles of runs — meaty even by Alpine standards. And when fresh snow falls, as it often does in the
Pyrenees, the off-piste is impressive.

Soldeu is popular with both beginners and children, most of whom enrol in ski school. The teaching is good value — five three-
hour lessons for just £63 — and so popular that on the Monday morning, it took us almost an hour to queue for the gondola up
the mountain and fight our way through hordes of families to register with a class. Not a great start.

Callum had been up since 6am, doing star jumps at the end of my bed (“To warm up, of course, Daddy”), so by the time the
class started, at 11.30am, he was raring to go. With him were 10 other children, all aged seven or eight and with some
experience on skis. Their teacher was Ann, a blonde fortysomething who looked less like a ski instructor than the social
secretary of a golf club in Surrey. The kids loved her.

In Aspen, where each instructor took charge of just three or four children, parents were presented with written reports
detailing their darlings’ daily progress. Soldeu was much more laid-back. When I picked up Callum at the end of the first day, I
asked Ann how he’d got on. “Fine, brilliant. See you tomorrow!” she grinned.  I asked Callum how it went. “Um, a bit boring,
because we only went on the flat bit,” he said. “But actually brilliant. I’ve got a new best friend.”

At 1pm, the restaurants on the mountain were horribly crowded, so we took the gondola down to Soldeu for lunch. At the
Villager Pub, we had home-made steak pie and chips and fish fingers, which, with soft drinks, came to £14. Beside us, a French
family struggled with the English menu. “Qu’est-ce que c’est, gravy?” a boy asked his father.

It’s easy to be sniffy about Andorra. The bars have karaoke and quiz nights, the supermarkets are stacked with Heinz beans
and Fray Bentos pies. But we found it an easy-going, friendly place. In the evenings, the atmosphere was fun without being
boisterous, and families were welcome everywhere.  The skiing was pretty good, too. Although some of the resort runs
became dangerously crowded at times, there was plenty of open terrain above the tree line, with some fast reds and easy
blacks (too easy, a purist might say). My main complaint was not about the flattering piste classifications, but the lifts. Although
most of the hardware was modern, some lifts would frequently stop for no apparent reason.

Callum and I quickly fell into a routine of taking the first lift up at 9am and doing an hour of gentle blue runs before he started ski
school. I had imagined we’d ski together in the afternoons, me laying a fatherly hand on his shoulder and teaching him how to
execute a perfect turn. It didn’t work out that way, because: (a) Callum was too tired; and (b) it’s about as easy teaching your
own seven-year-old to ski as it is teaching your spouse to drive. Not for-getting (c): I haven’t mastered the perfect turn myself.
Fortunately, there was an alternative to long afternoons in our hotel room playing Yahtzee and crazy eights. Thomson and its
sister company, Crystal, run a supervised club called Kidzone in an apartment near the bottom of the gondola. This was staffed
by Kirstie and Heather, who picked up the children from ski school, fed them cheese sandwiches and cakes, and played board
games with them while their parents skied. Six half-days cost £120 during half-term this winter.
Every day, at 4.30pm, I would turn up to collect Callum from Kidzone, feeling a bit guilty that I’d enjoyed a great afternoon alone
on the slopes. He would catch sight of me and his face would dissolve into tears because he didn’t want to leave. I thought the
apartment, above Slim Jim’s Internet Cafe, looked a little sad, but he loved it. On our last day, there was no school, so we skied
together all morning in dazzling sunshine. Callum, who was negotiating the slopes with increasing confidence, took me to the
Mickey Snow Club, an attractive Disney-themed children’s area with obstacles, bumps and banked turns. It was so good that
we did it again. And again.

So how did Andorra compare with Aspen? Callum looked thoughtful. “I actually think it was better,” he said on the 5am coach
ride back to the airport. I wasn’t so easily swayed, but it was certainly a whole lot cheaper. Callum is already talking about going
back next year.