Ski holiday day 9: homeward bound

Normally we've set off at 5am or 6am to try to get a tea-time ferry from Calais. This year, we had to drop Sam and Lucy at Chambery Airport where they were catching a flight back to Southampton and, from there, to Jersey. They were expecting to be back in about 7pm.

It meant our journey home would start until around 8am, so a little later than normal. After last night's snowfall, there was a good four or five inches on the road and it was very cold. The snow plough had been up the main road to the resort already.

It was very cold, but not icy. I went down and cleared the snow off the car and then drove up the hill to the road that leads to the back of the chalet. I got up the hill easily, the winter tyres offer really good grip in snow like this and the traction control didn't cut in at all). Once up the hill, I backed up to the steps above the chalet so we could load up. It was quite a squeeze.

Sam drove to Chambery and we were there for 10am (their flight left at noon).

For Margaret and I, it was the long 500-mile drive to Calais. It's best not to look at the miles coming down for at least a couple of hours, but it was actually a really good journey and we did it in seven-and-a-half hours with one stop to refuel.

We had a flexible ticket for the P&O ferry and we managed to get on a 6.15pm crossing instead of 8pm. We were home at just after 10pm (with an hour gained for CET switch to GMT).

It's always nice to be home after such a long journey, although the house does seem empty without Holly. We had to wait until 10am before we could pick her up from kennels. As always, she was overjoyed to see me and didn't stop wagging her tail all day. I don't think she's unhappy in kennels; often she'll be outside playing with other dogs and this time she was loose inside the kennels walking round with the kennelmaid as she did her jobs. It has clearly been a cold and wet week at home because Holly was filthy. First job was a bath.

Ski holiday day 8: our last day and the perfect ending

For me, it's always a bit of a worry on the last day of your ski holiday that this is the day (just before a long drive home) that you fall and hurt yourself. Better to do it on the last day, rather than the first perhaps, but it's almost as if I've been tempting fate all week and this is the day I say hello to Mr Tree.

I'm never worried about hurting myself, the big worry is getting home. Margaret would be concerned about my theoretical broken leg, of course, but might be more worried about Holly getting out of kennels on time and having to drive in France, on the wrong side of the road, for 700 miles.

Of course, there was no last-minute injury (not even a fall). Saturday is change-over day for most people, so we stayed out of the busy Tarentaise tail-backs and spent the day in a Sainte-Foy that was even quieter than usual.

The snow was wonderful and it was very cold, but also sunny, so the top slopes were a real treat.

Lucy, who would make an excellent spy or journalist, had been eavesdropping on a conversation about the cafe/bar on the Grand Soliet run just above the Marquise lift. Apparently, it had been a disaster and all the staff had been fired except Barbie. They couldn't fire Barbie because she was something of a Sainte-Foy legend. Barbie was still working at Les Marquises and Sam was very keen to see whether she deserved her nickname.

Cold, but sunny on the terrace at La Marquise. We really
need a proper selfie stick.

So, after skiing the top run a few times (I stayed on the Grand Soliet, but Sam and Lucy went off to do some harder runs) we met up at Les Marquises. I'd been given some late skiing tips from Sam and Lucy (my two coaches) - mainly involving getting my hips further forward, always facing down the mountain and practising my hoppy turns. I find that it all works very well for a little while, then I either lose concentration or the slope gets a bit steeper and I revert to leaning back and skiddy turns. Anyway, it was a great morning and the balcony at Les Marquises (which I think means either "high windows" or "the penthouse") was in the morning sun.

Barbie was a charming, very attractive, middle-aged Frenchwoman and deserves a kinder nickname and Les Marquises is a great place to stop for elevenses. While we were there a Frenchwoman arrived on snowshoes having walked up from Sainte-Foy accompanied by a small Jack Russell terrier, who was very shivery and would have preferred to sit inside.

We skied a little more after our break and then met Margaret for lunch in the Piano Bar. They do nice snacks, but everything is served in polystyrene packaging (like a fast-food outlet) and the cutlery is also plastic. It's not good for the environment and trying to eat a crispy croque monsieur with a plastic fork is a recipe for fork breakage (best to use your fingers). Sam and I skied a little more after lunch, then I called it a day and left Sam to it for another hour.

I've really, really enjoyed my skiing this holiday. The snow has been great and we have managed to miss French holiday weeks. I'd go to Sainte-Foy again. I wouldn't want to ski there every day, but if you have a car, it's very easy to get to Tignes, La Rosiere, Les Arcs or La Plagne. Even one of the Three Valleys resorts are close enough for a day trip. It’s also been lovely to spend some time with Sam and Lucy. Their home will be in Jersey now, so we will have to get used to seeing them maybe three or four times a year. I was rather spoiled when they lived in London and I worked in London.

The rest of the day should have been about packing and other dull tasks, but at about 4pm it started snowing and soon everywhere was blanketed. After packing, I suggested a walk in the snow, so Sam, Lucy and I headed out like excited children. Margaret had not slept well for a couple of nights and was not feeling that good, so we left her and headed up into the village.

Sam and Lucy in the snow.

Cars were arriving in the resort and several of them (probably English people without winter tyres and snow-socks) were struggling to get up the hill. The BMW was already covered by an inch or two of snow. I'd put the skis in the rack already and they were buried too. I do have winter tyres, and my journey would be downhill, so I wasn’t too worried about getting on the road next morning.

It was very pretty in the village, some children were sledging on the nursery piste and they had the snow blowers working at the bottom of the slope and where you turn for the first lift. With real and artificial snow, there was a real depth building up.

I wish I was skiing tomorrow rather than a 15-hour journey back to the flat fens.

Ski holiday day 2: I'm back on skis

I wanted to make quite an early start (8am) in order to meet Sam and Lucy in Annecy, so we were first to breakfast. There was plenty to eat and Novotel gets a good mark from us.

Outside, the car was covered in thick frost and there was a freezing fog. It looked pretty grim, but I put "Annecy centre" in the sat nav and off we went. The roads were dead quiet and the fog soon became thinner and then disappeared completely.

We were in Annecy within two hours; Margaret texted Sam to say we were getting close and he said to meet us at the car park by the Hotel de Ville. I was busy looking for that when we passed Hotel Splendid where they had been staying, so I pulled up in front to get my bearings. Margaret said she could see Sam in reception and, sure enough, he was just checking out. Lucy had gone on ahead to the car park. We loaded their cases into the car (it was a tight fit), Sam texted Lucy to say come back and we were all set for Sainte-Foy.

Beautiful Annecy - on Lucy's iPhone 6

I'd been to Annecy last year with Sam and Lucy and we'd had a nice wander around the mediaeval centre and also a swim in the lake. There was no swimming today, but Sam took over the driving and it was good to see the place again - it is a beautiful location.

Sam and Lucy had not had a great journey yesterday. They'd flown from Jersey to Geneva and had hoped to get a bus to Annecy. Unfortunately, there was just one bus available and it was a long wait, so they'd had a very chilly afternoon in Geneva and got to Annecy much later than planned. At least their hotel booking was on the computer!

Annecy and the drive to Albertville was familiar and once we got into the Tarentaise valley, it seemed like going home. The gothic churches are dotted about the hillsides and going past Bellentre brought back memories of a sunny walk last spring. If it was familiar for me, it must have been much more so for Sam and Lucy, who lived here for seven months and were both feeling quite nostalgic about the place.

We got to Sainte Foy by just after noon and found the cleaners still busy, so we dropped our bags, parked the car and went to a cafe by the bottom lift for lunch. It was a lovely sunny day - quite similar to our last visit when we'd snow-shoed to La Monal and had visited the same bar at the end of our trek. We got a seat on the sunny terrace, surrounded by high, snowy mountains and I have to say - this beats sitting on a hot beach any time! We had the fixed menu - massive salad for starter, then sausage and polenta. I was very full, but Sam and I had said we'd have a ski in the afternoon, so we had to keep moving! The snow was lovely and the resort really quiet.

We only skied for an hour or so and then called in at the Piano Bar for a drink. Sam has a lot on his plate right now. He's about to buy into the doctors' practice in St Helier so has been arranging the loan for that, he'll soon buy into the pharmacy business as well and will then need to borrow more money to buy a house, perhaps in 2016. It's a lot of debt to take on - perhaps seven times annual earnings - compared to me where my maximum debt has never been more than three times annual earnings. Debt is such a necessary evil for young people today. For sure, my children earn a much better salary than I did, but they are saddled with debt from the age of 18 when they leave for university. Owing so much money must be really stressful and quite scary, especially with inflation being so low. At least I had the advantage of relatively high wage and retail price inflation to devalue my debt and make it easier to pay. Interest rates hit 15 per cent during the 1980s, but inflation was pushing 20 per cent some years. I'm not sayings that's a good thing - it definitely isn't - but an inflation rate of two or three per cent does help reduce debts quite a bit over 10 years and, with government debt being so great, I'm pretty sure they'll be making sure we get back to those levels quite soon.

Our Sainte-Foy chalet is fantastic, there are three bedrooms downstairs, two bathrooms, a large lounge kitchen upstairs and a mezzanine area at the very apex of the roof. It's fitted out to a good standard  and the views from the front are amazing (as this picture from Lucy shows).

View down the Tarentaise towards Bourg-Saint-Maurice from our chalet.

Forced onto our feet

Margaret on the Haute Tarentaise.

This is a little embarrassing - we set off to drive up to Arc 1600, but when we arrived Sam realised we had locked the ski clamp, but had not brought they key. It wasn't practical to drive all the way back to the chalet and then all the way back up the mountain, so we decided we'd do the walk that Sam had mapped out a day or so earlier.

Back to the chalet and on with the walking shoes. The route planned would be on part of the Tour de Haute Tarentaise, a two or three-day walk around the higher villages and paths along both sides of the valley.

We drove down to the main road and parked the car at the side so we didn't have to walk back up to Villaret at the end and then walked up the hill to Vulmix. It was a lovely day, warm and sunny, but also clear so that we had excellent views across the valley. Flowers were springing up everywhere and people in the villages were getting their vegetable gardens sorted out and their geraniums out of winter store.

There's a lot of building work going on, with new chalets being built and quite a lot clearly constructed in the last five years. Some of them are very grand, large places and I wasn't sure if they were homes or holiday homes being let. There's clearly a lot of money being spent in this area.

Coming down from the Haute Tarentaise, we descended via the road and then steep paths down to Bellentre, where we had a picnic lunch in the sunshine. A lot of French villages have a communal parking area and this also had a couple of picnic tables, a boules pit, some play equipment and a table-tennis table made from concrete (even the net was concrete). Villages also have communal rubbish and recycling bins; and most have a running water trough as well. I guess this is where everyone would once have got their water and they're being kept for sentimental reasons (an old focus point of the community).

From Bellentre, we were able to walk under the main road at the bottom of the valley to the Isere river. There's an excellent, wide path running alongside the river, which would take us back to Bourg-saint-Maurice. The path was shared with cyclists and was quite popular. It was better regulated than Rutland Water, so it wasn't too much of a nuisance and we made quick progress back to Bourg. We'd walked about 12 miles and the last mile was a real struggle. Even though we'd parked the car at the bottom of the road up to Villaret, we still had a long climb up from the river to where we'd parked.

Quite a hard day, but nice walking.

Lucy spotted this photo opp' during the walk. Aircraft contrails had
make a giant X in the sky.