For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been seeing this in my rear-view mirror:

Yes, there’s snow on Troodos! And snow on Troodos promises a fun weekend.

One of the main reasons for buying our Land Rover was so we could drive to Troodos for Snow-Fun. The roads up there can be carnage in the snow and often only 4x4s and cars with snow chains are allowed. And when there’s snow, lots of people head up there to enjoy it.

The main attraction is the four ski slopes on Mount Olympus. After various hiccups last year, this year we had a plan for getting the most out of our trip to Troodos.

These are my Top Tips:

One

Go during the week if you can. Troodos gets really busy at the weekend. Goobie has school, so we had to brave the Saturday crowds.

Two

GET THERE EARLY. I can’t emphasise this enough. On Saturday we arrived at 8.45am, 15 mins before the ski hire opened. The car park was already almost full and there was a small queue for ski hire. Leave it any later and not only will you spend even longer queuing for your skis, you may also have to park halfway down the hill because the car park will be full.

Three

Before setting foot in the ski hire building, take a strong chill-pill and accept that you are about to lose an hour of your life. Minimum. I fail to do this every time. Even Goobie was crying by the time we finally got out. For me, the ski hire building is Hell-on-Earth.  I’m very British when it comes to queuing – I like a quiet, orderly queue and if the person behind me even enters my peripheral vision I can feel my heart rate spike. God forbid someone actually touches me. I spend the time moaning loudly and glaring at transgressors. My passive-aggressiveness is cutting enough to floor anyone who realises I’m being passive aggressive – which is no one. Everyone is too busy trying to get ahead in the queue and talking too loudly to hear me.

Given my views on queuing, it pains me to offer this advice, but I will because it would have saved me a lot of angst. In the ski hire building there is a room for you to put on your skis. There are two doors; one marked ‘entrance’ and one marked ‘exit’. Ignore both signs. Everyone else does. If you queue up by the exit, you will just be standing TOTALLY STILL for half an hour while everyone else goes out through the entrance and joins the queue for the tills quicker.

A final note: once you get into the queue for the tills, head for the till furthest from the changing room. Yes, it looks like a longer queue, but it isn’t. The queue nearest the changing room is a bottle neck, it looks shorter but it’s total chaos. If, like me, you hate loud, squashy places, you are risking a coronary by joining this queue. I made this mistake this weekend. But let’s move on, I can feel my blood pressure rising.

Four

Don’t be a numpty like I was last year and exit the ski hire building without checking your ski boots fit. Apparently a size 7 is a size 8 in ski boot world. I had to go through the Ski Hire Hell in point 3 all over again just to change them.

Five

If you’ve promised your child some fun skiing but you get there too late (allowing for the hour queuing and that the ski hire closes at 4pm), make sure you bring a sledge. There’s a great place for sledging next to the main ski lift on the Aphrodite slope, or there’s Troodos Square. If you haven’t brought your own sledge and you have a disappointed child, you are now screwed because it means you’ll have to buy one at Troodos Square. Make sure you take out a second mortgage to pay for it. You are a captive market. Or I was last year when this happened to me.

Six

Buy ski-lift passes for everyone. This year they’ve added a new little ski lift for the baby slope at Aphrodite. Such a good idea for little legs that get tired quickly. We didn’t know about this new ski lift so bought one ski lift pass for me and Matt to share taking in turns on the bigger slope. It would have saved time and energy if we’d had one each – but buying two more would have involved going through Ski Hire Hell again, and nothing is worth that.

Seven

Don’t get too anal about the queue for the ski lift – even if you’re being passive-aggressive and trying to teach by example. No one cares and you’ll be there forever. Plus, you’ll look like an idiot. Yes, I was that idiot.

Eight

Allow plenty of time to hand in your skis etc. Before you can actually hand in your skis, the bar-code on them needs to be scanned by the person at the till in the ski hire building.  However, the tills are the same ones being used by people trying to take skis out. This means that there are two queues for one till. Except there isn’t really a queue and it’s Ski Hire Hell Part Two.

Make sure you take off your ski boots before you reach the till, otherwise just your skis and poles are scanned and you are told to come back to the till to have your boots scanned once everything else has been handed in. This means joining the queue again – except this time you are now queuing with people waiting to take their skis out. It’s Ski Hire Hell Part Three. Admittedly, if you are returning your equipment later in the day, the queues for people taking skis out won’t be as long. But if you’ve gone up for just the morning and are done by lunchtime, it could be a nightmare.

Nine

There is a restaurant next to the ski hire building where you can get a hot chocolate and lunch. Otherwise, if you’ve finished skiing for the day, head down to the Ben Nevis restaurant in Troodos Square. Go to the far end of the restaurant and, if you are very lucky, you’ll be able to get a seat right next to a floor-to-ceiling window that has a spectacular view. If you go at the weekend it will be full and you’ll probably end up on a table by the door. Don’t bother taking your coat off as people rarely remember to close the door after them when they go out. And no amount of passive-aggressiveness will change that.

Ten

You will find when exiting the car park that it is a lot fuller than it was when you parked (if you came early) and there will now be cars parked along the side of the road, blocking half of it. In order to get out, remember that just because it looks like you can’t squeeze your Land Rover into that tiny space between the tree and the car coming in the opposite direction, doesn’t mean that everyone around you (beeping horns) agrees. Breathe deeply, say a prayer, and bear in mind that when the car coming at you in the opposite direction is a monster-sized Mercedes, it will be far more painful to them if their £50K 10-wheel drive gets a dent in it.

Thus concludes my Top Tips. Maybe by next year I’ll get it totally right. That said, once Ski Hire Hell was over, we had a glorious day. It was hot and sunny and at one point I was skiing in my t-shirt. Surreal. We’ve only been on the beginners slope, Aphrodite. It does get busy at the weekend, but if that’s the only time you can go, don’t let that put you off. All joking aside, I love how laid-back Cypriots can be and, if you let some of that rub off onto you (I’m trying), you’ll have a brilliant day out. After all, there’s room for everyone.

There are ski lessons for children over five. Goobie is too young at the moment, but the baby slope is so gentle that he got to do a few runs before getting tired (see my point about ski lift passes). A child’s natural sense of balance is amazing to watch.  For Goobie, the actual snow rather than the skiing was the star attraction. He simply wanted to build a snowman. Scattered throughout the trees were countless snowmen, built by countless families enjoying their day out. We kicked off our skis and helped Goobie build our own. And what a fine snowman it was.