It's been a funny old (last) week



 As you can imagine this last week, since Zoe, Hugo and friends went home has been quite strange.  We had such a brilliant time with them all in Flaine that inevitably life on our own again was always going to be a bit of a comedown.  But it is also the last week of our adventure which has also played on our mind and sometimes caused some low mood times.

We had planned to ski a bit more this week to counter some of this but also the weather has been really variable this week, with the lifts and ski area actually closing one day due to high winds and threats of thunder and lightening.  

Whilst the ski areas up towards the top of the mountain have been getting high winds and even blizzard conditions, down in the town, which is a mere 700 metres above sea level we have experienced heavy rain.  

This has meant that Melle and I have spent a lot of time in Homer and although we have tried to get out and go for a walk in the brighter moments the rain can sometimes return quite brutally and on Monday we got absolutely soaked doing just that (see pic below).  So our mental health was certainly not the best early in the week and we had to work hard to support each other at times.

We did manage to ski on Saturday for a couple of hours, including an hour in Morrillon when the clouds blew over and we could actually see further than the end of our ski's.  Sometimes, if you really want to ski then you do need to just put your kit on and go for it.  That doesn't mean we would ski in 'white out' conditions - that's just plain daft and unpleasant too - but in order to be around for the hour of clear ski and sunshine you might need to ski when it is snowing and overcast.  I think we were both really grateful for that hour or two - it's always amazing when we get a little bit of activity and outdoors especially in the mountain surroundings.  And sometimes you get something unexpected like the dj set that we bumped into in Samoens 1600 with about 1000 people attending.  See pics below.


As Melle has mentioned in another blog we also keep our eyes peeled on the snow forecast website (which covers up to six days for every resort so we can check Flaine, Samoen, Les Carroz etc) and we noticed that sunshine was forecast for Tuesday.  So we planned for an early start that day and to ski all day - with a tour around all the villages including Flaine so we could ski all our favourite runs.  As it happened this turned out to be one of the best skiing days of the whole season for us as the snowfall from the previous two days had improved all the pistes.  How the local pisteurs had got the opportunity to groom most of the slopes we'll never know (as it was snowing through most of the night) but they had.  Also fortuitously we had taken our skis for an end of season maintenance service at a local shop on the Monday and so we had almost brand new edges and cleaned and waxed blades.  So we had a brilliant day and as Melle said at the end 'we ski'd our pants off' not finishing until nearly 5pm which is probably the latest we had ski'id the whole season.  See pics below from the day.





We had, a few weeks ago, decided to use our last free visit day by going to Avoriaz and skiing there in the last week but largely because the weather was so variable and we wouldn't know the area we decided to give it a miss.  We had such a brilliant day on the slopes the day before, it was also our 50th day of the season we'd gone skiing so we decided to call a halt there.  We packed up and decided to set off home early maybe taking in one or two extra attractions on the way home.

After a long drive to Geneva to fill up with gas and diesel we then drove through Switzerland and Germany before arriving in Strasbourg for the night.  Search for Sites recommended the park and ride by the tram station and so we stayed there and got free Tram tickets too - visiting the city centre bot at night and in the day too.  Although we didn't have time (or finances) for visiting museums etc we enjoyed walking around such a beautiful and culturally significant city.  Another one to visit again in summer when a bit more time and maybe the weather also makes it even more special.






We have gone the long way round back to Calais (a) to avoid French toll roads which can be very expensive (b) because we already have a Swiss vignette for the motorways which we'd bought for earlier trip and (c) doing this would allow us to venture into Germany, Luxembourg and potentially Belgium too which are both places of interest and apparently also offer lower diesel prices too.

Using Search for Sites we parked in a drive of a closed chateaux in a quiet part of Belgium near Dinan on the Friday night.  We noticed that there were some signs discouraging walkers and banner tape around but then on Saturday morning at about 8am we found out why.  We had a knock on door from local police telling us that a car rally would be taking place in the area and we had limited time to get out!!  It was the quickest we had got going any morning of the adventure. 😃😂😂



Wet n rainy Ypres 🇧🇪

This blog was written by Chris


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My thoughts on skiing in the Pyrenees

Image
The Pyrenees and all its rugged beauty I've only skied three weeks in the Pyrenees so admittedly these thoughts are from a fairly minimal experience.   I’m not an expert, and have limited experience of 5 resorts in Pyrenees so maybe not everything is true of everywhere.  I haven't gone to the trouble of checking all the technical specifications of mountain peaks and average annual snowfall over the last 100 years either - these are just my thoughts following spending 2 months in Alps last year and a month in Pyrenees this. 😁 It seems to me that nearly everyone, especially from the UK and northern european countries goes to the Alps for their winter holiday so the resorts there have especially large size and infrastructure particularly for alpine skiing.  For example the ski lifts seem to have considered every slope and possibility and access to slopes is frequent and convenient.  The free ski buses in the Alps have routes throughout resorts to make sure it's as...
Read more

Thank You Samoens

Image
So we're coming to the end of the first part of our Alpine adventure as we prepare to pack up and go to meet our friends Helen and Felix for a weekend city break in Geneva over the coming weekend.  It's nearly three weeks since we set off from home in Shrewsbury and when we come back to the Alps we are planning to move to a different village as February is a very busy month with the French (and British) school holidays increasing the population in Samoens ten fold from 2,500 to about 25,000.  So we plan to find somewhere a bit smaller and quieter but more of that later. Coming to the Grand Massif ski area we were aware that there are a number of villages we could stay in but we planned to stay somewhere, in the first place, that gently introduced us to Alpine living.  We settled on Le Giffre Campsite in Samoens because alongside electric hook up and the basic water filling and emptying it offered hot shower blocks, laundry facilities and a store for boots and skis. ...
Read more

They think it’s all over, it nearly is now

Image
So here we  are in Saint-Valerie-en-Caux on the French / Normandy coast with about 24 hours to go of our adventure.     Where did the last ten weeks go?     Honestly - we have tried to bring the weather back from Andalucia  The last week has been a significant driving affair, a real whistle stop tour up through the centre of Spain and then the west coast of France.    Over two thousand miles I think and a variety of different overnight stops - some better than others!   We stopped for a day visit in San Sebastián and the weather was really lovely with full sun and blue sky to make this little resort seem like a great place to return some day.    The sea was really inviting and we stood transfixed for half an hour watching foot volleyball being played 2 v 2 on the beach.    Over lunch we tried the local ‘pintxo’ variation on tapas - they were lovely and it was very easy to join in.    Once in France we also p...
Read more