Feature My Story… with James Greenway
We gave up the rat race to open a ski chalet in France
The snow, the snow!
“It all started with a ski holiday in France in March 2009. We’d gone away with family and the chalet where we’d stayed had been awful. On the flight home, my wife, Gemma and I said to each other: “We could do better. Why don’t we give it a go?’ We were both at a stage in our careers where we thought, what have we got to lose?
“Within a month, in April, we were back in France looking at chalets. By May we were securing property and building a website. By June we had our first booking – it all happened very fast – and this was on top of working our regular jobs and trying to keep our plans quiet.
“I’d been working for ten years in recruitment, and my wife Gemma, worked as a litigation executive at a Leeds law company and we lived in Guiseley. We were bored of the rat race and thought, why not? The worst-case scenario was that we’d get into a bit more debt, but have a six month holiday and one hell of an adventure.
“We’re a very proactive couple and we just had the attitude, nothing ventured, nothing gained. We’ve been married for three years and Gemma says we had a chalet rather than a baby.
“We found a place in Saint Martin de Belleville in the Three Valleys, south east France, near the Italian border. The atmosphere is very relaxed. We thought about what we’d want – not too posh, not too fancy, but relaxed and nice and spacious. We run the chalet for six months over winter and come back to Leeds for six months over summer.
“Me and Gem are snowboarders. I only started when I began earning money eight or nine years ago – since then I’ve spent about a week on the snow every year. It’s not something either of us have been doing since an early age, but we love it. Now, we probably get out on the snow about four or five times a week – at least for an hour and if there’s time, from 10 until 4pm.
“We attract a varied crowd. From young snowboarders – the hip and trendy crowd – to a 76-year-old skier who came by himself. They arrived in the same week and I was thinking, how is this going to work? But it worked really well. He came out with us every day and got really involved.
“In the evening, we serve a three-course meal with free wine – usually the local red, which we buy in 20 litre boxes. We serve large portions of good hearty food like bangers and mash, spicy pork goulash, spaghetti meatballs. I cook the food and Gemma makes the desserts and prepares afternoon tea – there’s always a cake fresh out of the oven waiting for you when you get off the slopes – it might be banana cake, chocolate cake, carrot cake…
“We’ve been living and breathing this, and to come out the other side of setting it up, and for it to be a success, is great. We’ve had purely 5* reviews – it makes us think we’re doing the right thing.
“It can be hard work – cooking breakfast and dinner for 13 people everyday. But it’s not hard work in the way that work can traditionally be hard (and boring). I get up at 6am or 7am to get the bread from the boulangerie. I get the guests up and out on the slopes. Later, I get them home and to the bar; and do it all again the next day. Our guests are the centre of our world for a week.
“It’s been about living by our wits – you don’t tend to have to live by your wits in Leeds. You get on train, go to work, go home again. It felt like we could have fallen in a rut and stayed there. It was time to challenge ourselves.
“The best thing is the freedom you buy yourself. The worst is the time away from family and friends – you miss things like birthdays, weddings and nights out: things you’d usually be around for.
“A lot of our friends think we’re jammy gits – but there’s nothing jammy about it. We’re working hard and we’ve risked a lot. However, we do appreciate that not one person along the way has said, ‘You’re making a mistake’.
“And yes, you can get a bit sick of snow – it’s quite limiting, you can only really do one thing – ski or snowboard, of course. But we frequently remind ourselves how lucky we are.”
www.greenmountainchalets.co.uk
Posted on Wednesday 1st September 2010
Sophie Haydock
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