Yep let's just do it......

Out of the blue about 2 weeks ago I got a Whats App message ‘We’re going to be in La Clusaz on weekend of 18/19 Feb if you fancy a ski with us’ said Dave. Dave is a good guy I knew from work and his wife, Suzy, was also good fun when we played mixed doubles tennis for Woodfield so I had a quick look on the web and La Clusaz was a place we could ski for a day with our Grand Massif season pass. So let’s do it!!

Melle, being Melle, was up for it too and so we started planning to go over on Saturday 18th Feb. This might sound easy, and maybe for French mountain people it is. But although we could see there was a place we could park Homer for the night we didn’t know if it would be free or how accessible it would be - i.e. how high or mountain roads or temperature etc. Also we would have to pack up Homer and refill the gas and diesel and do some shopping and laundry and never mind getting the ski passes sorted.  The website suggested, in French, that they could be either free or 50% off and that you need to produce original GM passes together with proof of purchase.

So it would’ve been way easier to just stay in Sixt Fer-A-Cheval or Samoens and have an easy day. But we didn’t!!!

And the packing up went ok as did the filling up and getting there, after a midway overnighter (more of which in a minute) and the passes turned out to be a doddle as we parked right by a La Clusaz ticket office and the assistant knew exactly what to do without any prompting.

And what a day we had. Dave and Suzy and Duncan, Angus and Kirsty (their young adult children) who gave us such a great day in La Clusaz, wow, great skiing, great lunch and a good Apres Ski to boot.

As we’re all from Shrewsbury area, Melle and Suzy spent pretty much the whole day realising they have numerous friends in common and that our children are also quite interconnected with various mutual friends although oddly they don’t know each other. Whereas Dave and I generally talked skiing and put the world to rights and occasionally the ‘children’ (I say children but they’re all 16+) joined in too - they are a bit more confident skiers (ie they go for broke virtually all the time which I think might have something to do with the newness of their knees) so sometimes they’d be off doing their own thing and do two runs to our one. Especially when we stopped for cafe au lait!!

We got off to a fantastic start by skiing the Massif de l’Aguile area which provided a different view of Mont Blanc from the top too. Some fantastic long reds and blues later and by noon Melle and I had thunder thighs!!! But on we went as we skied through lunchtime at the rather slushy Massif de Manigod area and struggled a bit as many joining slopes weren’t open and also there were many more beginners on the slopes in that area. After lunch in town square (beers courtesy of Dave too!!) we went back to the morning slopes which didn’t let us down. By 4.30pm Melle and I were beginning to faint with exhaustion - bearing in mind we had stayed in an Aire next to a railway crossing the night before and so woken at 5am when the goods train whooshed past. It did mean we got to the slopes early and got a great spot in car park right next to Balm gondola but it probably meant we were a bit pooped after our first full days skiing of the whole trip.

So we finished the day back in town square - this time in a bar reliving the runs of the day and previous days / holidays skiing exploits over a few beers. And also realising we both have similarly crazy dogs but that’s a whole other story.

It was a fantastic day which we really loved - and thanks so much to Dave and Suzy for helping us to find bus stop to get back to Homer too, it was no easy task at 7pm in the dark I can tell you. Especially with a days serious skiing in our legs and a number of beer blondes in our bellies!!

La Clusaz - a real adventure which I’m told we’re going to relive with a night on Dave’s home brew when we get back to the Shire.

Next stop Annecy and then onto Switzerland for a mid adventure break….

This post was written by Chris with most of the photo's and all the videos by kind permission of Dave 👀