Gabriëlle, secretary of our foundation, started skiing again a long time ago despite her poor eyesight.

I went skiing for the first time when I was 22. A holiday in the middle of nature and being active at the same time... I was immediately sold! More years followed that I went on winter sports. Taking lessons every year and enjoying skiing and of course also apres-ski, because that is of course also part of it.

When we had children, we temporarily decided not to ski anymore because it would be difficult with small children without a babysitter and also expensive. Now, 12,5 years later, it started to itch more and more to go winter sports again. Our children are now eleven and nine and can enjoy a ski class together. However, we were still in doubt whether we should go, because my vision had deteriorated considerably since I started skiing from 60% to 15-20%. In the end, we took the plunge and decided to go anyway.

And so said so done. We went to St. Johann in Tirol, a beautiful place with beautiful blue slopes and not too busy. The children went to lessons for 2 days and we immediately went up with the gondola on the first day without taking lessons. I didn't want to show it, but it was pretty exciting. It actually went pretty well, but I did notice that it was difficult to go down the mountain with poor visibility. On the second day we were back on the mountain and I had tears in my eyes. We decided to take lessons for two days afterwards, because there is a solution for every problem.

We told our ski instructor that my eyesight was bad and she advised us to buy a vest and write BLIND on it. She and my husband also wore vests. At first it felt annoying to stand out like that, but the idea of ​​going skiing was bigger than the thought of the striking vest. I was glad we did because it was so much nicer to go down the mountain and follow someone when your eyesight is bad. The ski instructor gave directions with her pole when she went around a turn, which was exaggerated and conspicuous to other people, but very helpful to me.

So you see that you can actually do quite a lot, if you just want to and if you just look for a solution. We enjoyed this holiday and we will go again next year