In reply to Happy Haggis:
> (In reply to Sam Maher) the Bruce Goodlad Alpine Mountaineering book is great for starting out in the Alps - it has good descriptions of skills and techniques, as well as some route choices and ideas of how to progress (incl. suggested maps, gear etc.).
you are bang on! I've read the book cover to cover (its starting to look a bit tattered now...) and it is brilliant. Its just a matter of choosing which of the suggested routes because there are so many and all over the alps as well. Great fun by the looks of them but we couldn't do them all in one trip, though we'd like to. Hence looking for anyone's experiences as to what they did first or what they'd do differently, knowing what they know now.