Walking in a Winter Wonderland

From Aviemore on the way to the slopes of Cairngorm Mountain...

The White Witch lives here I honestly kid you not!

Skiing may have sucked donkey balls (excuse the vulgarity but those are the only words fit to describe how it went) but the view and the scenery was amazing!!

Yea yea so the wind chill at the top of the mountain was a happy -30 degrees Celcius and the instructor just made us ski ACROSS the slope (not downwards) for the two hours we were up there... freaking hard to ski ACROSS the slope without actually slipping downwards which was gee, I dunno, the most natural physical thing to do since us humans are not quite free from the governs of the laws of physics and maybe say gravity might pull us downwards the slope but NO! apart from not knowing how to ski, we had to learn how to ski ACROSS the slopes!!!!!!

So it was snowing as well up there and the wind was blowing it straight into our faces and when the instructor told us to look at her, look at how she's doing it! we mostly had our faces turned away from the wind and away from her and honestly you couldn't face upwards at all because little flecks of icy cold snow was beating into your face like miniature daggers, after awhile, your cheeks will turn red and hurt like mad from frostbite which would have already made your fingers hurt like mad too and they were very hard to move. You also couldn't speak properly after that because your face was frozen stiff.

Also, if you think your scarf and beanie was gonna keep you warm, hah! Think again cuz the snow just collects on the scarf and beanie and your breath will melt the ice on the scarf so little icicles form on them like candy floss when you lick it. And your black beanie is so white with snow it's grey! And icicles form on your face and eyelashes as well and if they don't they prolly melt so you have a very very wet face.

After two hours up there, I was about to cry and so so ready to give up. We trudged back to the train downwards and like little abused puppy dogs, we climbed ourselves back onto the bus (our refuge from the cold) and ate our lunch sandwiches and waited the hour before we went home.

We didn't even feel like skiing again on the lower slopes like the others did (they had so much more fun than us!) and we didn't even feel like going out to play in the snow and camwhore with the beautiful white mountains behind us... It was like 60 pounds burnedddddddd. Psstttt...

I soooo hope Kiruna isn't bad like this. Haih. It was cool tho cuz everywhere around you was white white WHITE!! Soo cool!!! And the snow collected on the tree branches and made them look like in the fairytalessss!!! And I sooooo felt like prancing around in the snow covered woods and going on mysterious adventures and chancing upon some friendly fauns who will take me back into their lovely warm homes hidden somewhere in a burrow under the snow and we'll have biscuits and warm tea by the fire and I'll fall asleep from all the merriment and wake up to find that I've been kidnapped by some evil White Witch and now my trusty friends will have to come find me and save me!!! Wooott!!! So magical I tell you.

If only!

The only picture of me and Cherie with the white mountainous slopes behind and our skis and poles. Taken well before the horrors of -30 degree Celcius wind chills began. We were actually smiling!!!