Joanna and David's Travels: 2013/3 Fini le Ski

It’s the 18th April and the temperature outside is in the 20s, inside Stan 30 degrees. This sudden change we are finding hard to cope with, wrong clothes, open the hatches not batten them down, use the fridge to keep things cold, not just as the only place things inside Stan that didn’t freeze. We exaggerate a little as we had become adept at keeping warm (cardboard under the carpet, blankets to isolate the cab with its big windows etc., and things were never as bad as the first week at Val Thorens. The snow this year has been exceptional, but also the bad weather – a succession of ‘perturbations’ (as the French call them, it’s a good word) instead of the normal anticyclone. So only 16 days skiing in the 5 weeks in the mountains but such good days with fresh snow – it snowed every time we went to a new ski station (yes every time). Anyway we are definitely fair weather skiers these days and happy to sit out the bad days.

Last blog ended in La Plagne where we could ski in ski out, ski back to to Stan for lunch – top spot. Another day at Les Arcs followed (because we can stay at a campsite with showers, washing machine etc). Last ski field in the Isere valley (La Tarentaise) was a smaller resort Valmorel. The memorable moments here were when we skied up and over into the neighbouring valley with the Col de la Madelaine. The road was metres deep in snow – just the sign showing, BUT the cafe/bar alongside was the exact same spot we parked Stan after the Tour de France passed by in 2009. To confirm our memories we had an excellent lunch at the cafe.

We then dashed back to near Grenoble to have a lunch with David’s old climbing friends – what an excellent spread, many courses, many drinks over a 5 hour afternoon session rendering David unfit to drive and Joanna fatigued with an overdose of French listening. There we hatched a new plan as we had heard friends Max and Lucy ( owners of the canal boat we spent a week with last year) were skiing at Champoluc in Italy and we wanted to end up skiing in Les Deux Alps which we enjoyed so much in 2010. Why not go via Chamonix and the Mont Blanc tunnel to Champoluc (in a valley running North from Aosta towards the Matterhorn) and then return via Turin and the Col de Montgeneve to Les Deux Alpes.

So we set off, and of course it was snowing as we went through the gorges of Ugine. Note this dirty town is typical of many steel works sited in these beautiful valleys where the iron ore of the Alpes was transformed into steel, initially using the abundant forest and later the hydroelectric power stations all along the valleys. David remembers the Ugine rugby team as the roughest in the league. Let’s move on, snow through Megeve, snow at either end of the tunnel and snow when we arrived at Champoluc. We did not have Max or Lucy’s phone numbers and had not contacted them to say we would join them, but figured that we could find Max in one of the bars late afternoon. However Max went one better, sitting in a bar he saw Stan drive past and despatched a runner to greet us in the car park. A great day skiing with them on the long trails going over to the next valley and the next to see all 3 valleys forming part of this ski complex One bad thing re Italian skiing is that the ski free age is now 80 !!! so David has to pay, BUT it was Lady’s Day so Joanna was half price. An Italian plus was the excellent espresso coffee for only one euro even up high. Next day the weather went overcast again = time to move on. South to Turin, then West to stop the night at the ski station of Sestriere (yes it snowed overnight). The town was rather dead = end of season and so we moved on over the border into France past the stations we had skied at 2 years ago and up to Les Deux Alpes. Our old favourite did not disappoint, same overnight cost of 7 euro, free electricity, ski lifts a 50m walk and even the ‘crazy hour half price beer on the return trail, and of course some new snow the first night. So three days of great skiing with lifts up to 3,400m altitude and lifts in every direction, plus cafes where we could sit and eat our packed lunch etc, plus a day wandering in the town buying some end of season bargain ski gear.

We are now on our way to pick up Katie as she finished work a few days ago and all her friends are breaking up and scattering aver the world as they do. In the last week or so they have been celebrating doing lots of crazy things on ski including skiing as fast as possible over some of the shallow lakes hoping they don't go through (better not to know too many details) but she, and the friends have survived it seems. She is with us for 2 or 3 weeks before heading home via Cambodia where she is meeting friends for a couple of weeks.

On the home front Joanna is having a cooking ball with duck, endives, local mushrooms (no English word except toadstools) and all the other foods. David faithful to the French bread either fresh daily or the Traditional loaves with last a couple of days, and the cheap beer from the Lidl supermarkets, of course we are sampling the local wine wine and the range of liqueurs that the Europeans are so good at.. David has had some success with our minimum price satellite dish bought at the last minute except that it has to be mounted each time on the roof and manually adjusted (not a great job in the freezing weather of the mountains) but can capture the French programs only so far. Hoping the warmer weather will allow more experimenting, however we are watching a fantastic BBC DVD of a series programme called Spiral (Engrenages in French), is in French with subtitles. Is incredibly intertwined with characters from police, gangs and drug world, politicians etc.