Snow sports in Scotland – taking the piste?
Written by Karen BryanVisit Scotland’s campaign portraying Scotland as a Winter Sports mecca has been criticised as misleading potential visitors. There’s hardly been any decent snow cover in the north of Scotland for years. I know when our son attempted to go snowboarding a couple of years ago it was all slushy hardly the “Artic wonderlands” mentioned on the Visit Scotland website.
Skiing in Scotland, it’s so CR@P you would not believe it” by moron noodle
When I did a Flickr search for “skiing Scotland” the first photo to come up was the one above with the text “Glenshee in Scotland, imagine skiing in cold sleet and howling winds = skiing in Scotland”.
Update Winter 2008
Our son had another attempt in 2008 and after a very early start and a 2 hour coach trip arrived in Aviemore to discover that the snow had melted overnight.
Update January 2010
After all the snow and low temperatures of January 2010 our son had a perfect snowboarding experience at Aviemore.
lol ! love the caption ….. yes I can confirm scotland is crap for wintersports … plus I would like to add that I dislocated my arm jumping over on the f@@@ing fence on the left …. Still had a laugh tho
Sorry to hear that you dislocated your arm while snow sporting in Scotland, at least you can laugh about it. I hope that you did enjoy some other aspects of your trip in Scotland. Being Scottish I believe that there iis so much beauty and other active sports such as kayaking and mountain biking that it is foolish of Visit Scotland to heavily promote snow sports with the unreliable snow cover.
One of our sons has taken up snowboarding and he’s practising on the dry slope at Edinburgh.
Sure … No disrespect to scotland … As a londoner I would still kill to have mountains like that near where I live … But fact of the matter is that its easier to get to the alps from down here … I almost reckon you’d be better off scrapping the chairlifts so you could go trecking accross the area with nothing man made in site … Oh by the way I used to ride with a couple of scots in france … they both slated glenshee too …
Skiing in Scotland!!!, i haven’t heard something so ridiculouus as that in my life. There is no snow and if there is, it’s probably the equivilant you get in southern spain which is like 1cm once a centry.
Have you attempted skiing in Scotland, Alehandro or did you realise that it was probably not a sensible idea?
[...] Another post was about skiing in Scotland where I was happily surprised to read that someone had actually had a good experience skiing in my native Scotland as I usually you hear about negative experiences such as “Snow sports in Scotland – taking the piste“. [...]
Skiing in Scotland is not crap, just unreliable. The last 2 seasons, snow cover has luckily improved. I went up several times, one time early in the season 3 foot of snow had fallen over 2 days. Yes, its unreliable and dont book a holiday, but rush up when it does snow, it can be great.
Gee – I agree that snow cover in Scotland is unreliable, so it’s probably not wise to book a snow sports holiday in Scotland in advance but to get there quickly if there are reports of good snow. Even then you can get caught out as our son’s uni club were caught out by a sudden overnight thaw, after leaving Edinburgh before dawn one Sunday morning last year.
The snow in Scotland is totally unpredictable. They can get good snow in November or May! Often visitors go there in February expecting good snow and are disappointed although there was snow on my visit. We had a 2 great days snowboarding.
On a good day Scotland can hold its own with most winter sports resort in the world.
john – Exactly what our son said on his day snowboarding in Aviemore last week. beautiful sunny day, perfect snow.
He wondered if the conditions in France would be as good for his snow boarding holiday there this week.
No need for him to worry Karen. There is excellent snow in France. Also the weather is looking good for this week.
Yes I read conditions in France were good on the TravelBites blog this morning. Now I just have to worry about him being careful on the slopes!