Nor, exactly, a girly boy. I’m better at cooking than DIY;
I wear deodorant, but not guyliner; I know the offside
rule in football, but am not unaware of
Dancing On
Ice
.
If you had a sliding scale of effeminacy with, say,
Rupert Bear at one end and Bluto from
Popeye
at the
other, I’d be just left of middle, ahead of Bagpuss, but
behind Barney Rubble.
Which is why, when I was tasked with being the (very)
odd one out in a group of five 25 to 45-year-old
professional females visiting the ski and spa resort of
Méribel in the French Alps, I wasn’t particularly fazed.
After all, I’ve got a girlfriend, friends who are girls, a
mum. My friends-who-aren’t-girls’ predicted that it
would either be an emasculating endurance test or a
Benny Hill-esque romp of speeded-up sauciness, but I was
out to prove themwrong. Turns out I had much to learn.
In recent years, luxurious and ultra-modern spas have
been popping up in growing numbers across the Alps.
Instead of slipping out of their boots and sliding over to the
bar after a day on the slopes, many skiers are nowopting for
a treatment or two; and the offerings available today, at
resorts such asMéribel, are aworld away from thewellness
offerings that have been popular since Victorian times.
We’re here to check this out first hand, but getting
down to the pampering, we’ve skiing to do. After checking
in at the central, three-star Le Savoy (
hotel-savoy-meribel.
com
),
a vision of modishmanliness, we get the free shuttle
through the handsome, woody resort to Altiport, an actual
airstrip above themain village. As a helicopter lands
behind us, Michel, our ski instructor, tells us he has been
teaching “since dinosaurs crossed the road”. His sexual
politics date fromroughly the same era. “I’mnot a spa
guy,” he tellsme. “I know it’s very cool, but it’s for women.”
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