A short walk in the snow

On the path down to La Rosiere - that's me (lower
down) and Sam. Lucy is the photographer.

There has not been a huge amount of snow in the Tarentaise valley so far this year, but this past week has seen a couple of snowy days and, today, it was snowing quite hard and steadily. It wasn’t too cold at our altitude, but it was sticking and building up. In the ski resorts 500 metres higher, this would be a great day for them – give the snow cannons a bit of a rest.

We were not that sure we’d get down to Bourg by car (well, we’d get down after a fashion, but not dead sure of getting back up again).

We decided that we’d walk down to Bourg and do a few jobs – get some money, put stamps on postcards, get some bread ... it was more to get out for some fresh air than anything else. I suggested we walk down into La Rosiere, so Sam, Lucy and I set off. The snow was quite deep, but not frozen so hard that you couldn’t get a heel dug in on the way down. Further down the path, it was actually quite wet and boggy and that was slippery. We would have found those snowshoes quite useful. I’d borrowed Margaret’s cagoule, so I was waterproofed against sleet. We were soon down in Bourg and soon completed the few jobs.

I really liked the machine in the post office for buying stamps. You tell the machine where the package or letter is going, you weigh it and the machine prints out a post credit. Stick it on, stick it in the postbox - simples!

Sam thought the La Rosiere route might be a bit slippery going back up so we decided to walk up through the town, join the Villaret road and walk up the hairpins. It was sleeting thickly in the town, but it turned back to snow as we gained height. It was actually a fairly quick walk and a couple of cars passed us making careful progress.

On the way up the hairpins, we met the snowplough coming back down and dumping snow in piles at the outer edge of the bends. It’s an impressive machine, a four-wheel drive tractor with massive wheels shod with thick chains. It makes a heck of a din (as I found out at 5am a few days ago). We might have been swept up and dumped with the snow, but the driver had seen us and pulled across so we could walk by. I think if I was in Villaret for a year, I’d get very good at walking up steep hills!

A day in Grenoble

This holiday wasn’t just about skiing because a) my legs would probably not last the distance and b) Margaret is not a skier, so it would be a bit of a miserable time for her if we disappeared all day, every day.

At the start of the holiday, I bought a book of 10 tickets which can be exchanged for a day ski pass and the plan was to use five this holiday and five the next. It works out at £355 for the book so £35 per day, which is an OK saving on a day-rate and gives you a bit of flexibility.

We’d been promised decent weather on Thursday, 6 February, so we’d agreed to visit Grenoble. Sam and Lucy had been there in January to pick up Lucy’s mum from the airport and said it was a nice place. They’d wanted to visit the Bastille, which overlooks the town but the cable car service was suspended for annual maintenance and there wasn’t time to walk up the steep hill.

The sunny weather in Bourg-Saint-Maurice didn’t hold as far down as Grenoble and it was a little dull with a chilly wind, but perfectly OK for a wander (as long as you kept moving). I’d been to Grenoble maybe 25 years ago on a car launch and I remember quite a snowy day and a city in a great bowl between mountains. That’s pretty much it, although the city will have expanded a bit since then.

It sits on a flat plain surrounded by high mountains. In the ice age, the site was towards the end of a large glacier and, as the ice melted, the valley became dammed and a long lake formed. It’s the floor of this former lake which the town is now built on. The Isere river, which runs through Bourg, flows down into Grenoble and makes a much wider river those 70 miles or so downstream.

Scenery on the journey down is spectacular and, once in Grenoble, we parked up in the museum car park, a multi-storey with the narrowest of ramps and smallest of spaces. We left the back end of the BMW hanging out by a foot or so (I think the place was designed with the Renault 5/Clio in mind). From there it was a short walk to the cable-car station and a spectacular (some might say scary) ride up to the Bastille.

As fortresses go, this was a strange one. It dominates the town and the valley and you get magnificent views, you can even see Mont Blanc quite clearly (and that must be about 100 miles distant). It’s a modern fort (well late 19th century) and most of its firepower is not directed at the valley and town, but behind the fort up to the slope of the mountain upon which it’s built. The defence plan identified the weak point as the mountain and so most guns point in that direction. There’s even a sneaky set of fire points in the mountainside above the fort, linked by a tunnel to the fort, where soldiers could snipe at besiegers. You can walk down the tunnel and around the walls into the gate of the fortress.

Panorama shots by Lucy on her iPhone

The Bastille was never besieged, soon after it was built Savoy became part of France and the threat from Italy moved further away to higher Alpine passes.

Grenoble has a history of science (there's an Ave Charles Darwin in recognition of the botanist) and geologists based here played a key role in understanding the formation of the Alps and interpreting the abundant evidence for folding and upthrusts of rock strata. You get a great view of magnificent folds in the surrounding mountains where glaciation has scraped valley sides sheer and given what amounts to a cross section of strata. It's no wonder the place spawned a number of famous French geologists.

We’d thought we might have lunch at the restaurant in the Bastille, but it was too cold to sit on the terrace and enjoy the view, so we reasoned, we’d get a better meal in the old town. The cable car ride down is quite exciting/scary depending upon your point of view. I'd decided to video it and, as you can see here, Margaret made a bit of a fuss! She says I’m mean for putting this up; I say she’s spoiled my nice video.

Safely back on terra firma, we walked into the heart of the old town through a nice park to the church of St Andre, an old brick-built church with public squares both sides and a nearby restaurant where we had a pretty good lunch.

Afterwards, we had a short walk around. Because Grenoble is surrounded by mountains, like Chamonix, you can turn into a street and find a mountain filling your view. It gives an interesting perspective to the city.

There are lots of references to Napoleon in Grenoble, including restaurants and a hotel where he stayed. On March 1, 1815, Napoleon landed at Golfe-Juan, between Cannes and Antibes, having escaped from Elba. A more obvious place to land would have been the valley of the Rhone river. From there the march to Paris would have been far easier and a lot faster, but he feared the royalist sentiments of the inhabitants of that region so he took the more difficult road through the Alps to Grenoble.

On March 7, 1815 his small Imperial column met the 5th Regiment of the Line, not far from Grenoble. Napoleon stepped forward and faced the muskets alone. With remarkable bravado and by using his charisma, he managed to win over the regiment. With the cry: "Vive L'Empéreur" the 5th changed sides as one man. The gates of Grenoble opened and the Napoleon received a warm welcome. Perhaps they appreciated the future tourism kudos a hotel could command with a “Napoleon was here” plaque above the door.

Of course, in June (just three months later) he met Wellington for the first time in battle at Waterloo (and received another warm welcome), but modern Grenoble makes the most of his short stay in the city.

A gourd for the Virgin Mary

Margaret, Sam and Lucy at Chapel St Michel

No skiing today, but it didn't seem like a good idea to sit around doing nothing. Sam and Lucy said they were going to walk up to the Chapel St Michel, the weather was OK, but snow was forecast and there was plenty of snow lying on the path.

Margaret wasn't keen on the walk up to the Chapel, but I suggested we walk as far as the shrine to the Virgin Mary, which is a good walk, but about two-thirds of the way to the chapel. I suggested we leave one of the gourds as an offering. We walked on the farm tracks, rather than the pilgrims' path and met the horses a bit higher up. They moved onto the track as we approached in the hope of a tasty treat, but we had nothing for them. Sam had an apple, but there was one apple and two horses, so he (perhaps wisely) kept it in his pocket. A little further on we saw a large dog fox scampering up the hillside. He was making much better progress than we were.

We reached the level just below the shrine fairly easily, but then had to traverse across from the farm track onto the pilgrims' path. We'd visited the shrine in early December and saw that someone had left a quince in there. I was pleased to see it was still there, looking remarkably fresh and we added our gourd to the little collection. There are some flowers, some lace, some tea, the quince and now a gourd. I'm not religious, but it was nice leaving something in the shrine.

Offerings to the Virgin Mary

Margaret wasn't keen to carry on, but we persuaded her to go higher and she managed to get to the Chapel quite easily. The last bit, as it had been in December, was quite icy and slippery but we managed to get up and down OK. See the video here. The path up from Villaret was not too icy, but would be more tricky coming down, so we decided to come back via la Rosiere on the other side of the crag, as this was a more gentle descent (without an exposed traverse) and a better path. It meant we got to la Rosiere below Villaret and had a bit of a climb back into the village. The path between Villaret and la Rosiere is quite steep and both boggy and snowy, but we took it steadily and got back up comfortably.

We were sitting on the patio cooling down when Roxy (aka Maurice) made an appearance. She’s a border collie (a proper farm dog) and very friendly. She stinks of cows, is thin as a rake, but has lovely white teeth and loves a belly rub. We’d take Roxy home, no trouble, but I don’t know what she’d make of the flat fens after a lifetime running up and down the Alps guarding and herding the cattle.

In the afternoon, we took the BMW down to Bourg-Saint-Maurice to have a nosy at the shops and also have a meal out. We thought we'd try Le Refuge Altitude 810 as we'd eaten there in March last year and it had been quite nice.

The snow had been falling gently all day and in Bourg is was sleet. It's amazing how much of a difference 200 metres makes. At Villaret snow, in Bourg wet sleet, but it was falling more heavily. We stopped in a bar for pre-dinner drink as it was a little early. It was still fairly early at 6.30pm and we surprised the waitresses in Refuge. It was empty when we arrived, but then some skiers came in followed by a huge party of three families, which added 19 people and suddenly the place was packed.

Refuge 810 is an interesting place with unusual decor. There's a clothes line with a string of frilly bloomers strung along one wall, lots of old skis and sledges hung up and we were sat below a stuffed fox (who didn't look happy with his lot) and a stuffed marmot.

There was a comedy moment when I thought I'd ordered a steak, but was actually asking for fish. Fortunately, I asked for it medium rare and the waitress realised something was not quite right.

I ended up with lamb shank, which was full of meat and very nicely cooked, but somewhat spoiled by being served in a cream and mushroom sauce. It really needed something sharp (like mint sauce perhaps) to contrast the greasy meat. By the time the cheese course came, we were pretty stuffed, so Lucy stashed the leftover cheese into her pocket to use up the next day. We'd bought some cheeses from England - Stichelton, Wode Hill Blue and Cote Hill Blue. The Stichelton (a Stilton style blue made from unpasteurised milk) was favourite and the Cote Hill Blue was very well liked (that's a soft blue from Lincolnshire). We'd left the Wode Hill Blue uncut as it was in a small, whole cheese. It's a soft blue made in Bedfordshire (also from unpasteurised milk) and it was gorgeous - so tasty and complex; definitely one to get again.

The sleet was still falling in Bourg, but was we drove up the hill, it became heavy snow and quite icy on the bottom part of the road. The traction control cut in a couple of times, so I slowed down and took the hairpins gently, rolling round in first gear and the winter tyres did their job. The snow socks (our last resort) are still in their bags.

Star pupil in Sammy Ski School, attacked by a chairlift

Arms forward - as if you're carrying a tray

This has been a day of mixed fortunes. On the plus side, my skiing was good; in fact I was the star pupil in Sammy Ski School (also the only pupil, of course). On the down side, I was swiped by a chairlift and knocked over, but that was the only fall of the day.

This was a long day skiing (for me), but a much better day; I was working hard on getting my body position right and it was paying off as the day was a lot easier on my legs. We started with the familiar trip up Cachette chairlift, then skied all the way down Belvedere past Arcs 1800, onto Liaison Grizzly which takes you almost into Vallandry and up the Grizzly lift.

We came down Grive and then up the 2300 lift a couple of times. This cuts across a large bowl which has a red one side and blue in the bowl. Below the lift there's a red and a blue. It was a good place to practise turns and I was doing pretty well.

At one side of the bowl there's a speed trap. You can ski into a roped off slope, through a little gate and then straight down past a radar gun, brake hard and check your speed at the bottom. I was keen to have a go. It didn't start well; I had to side-slide down the slope, but I found myself facing the wrong way into the gate and had to take my skis off, turn round and go through. Fortunately no-one was behind me! I flashed through the trap at 38k/h, just about managed a tight skid turn to the left to check my speed and join Lucy, who had been watching the whole thing with interest.

Looking down the speed trap.

Sam came through at 47k/h, so I'll need to work on my tuck and my stopping skills (to say nothing of my gate negotiation technique). After this excitement, we went up 2300 again with the intention of skiing down to the cafe on the side of the piste. I was on the right of the chair and I was a bit slow getting going. I'd have been fine skiing to the right, but I was going left and the chair was going right. There was only ever going to be one winner and I was dumped in the snow!

After lunch we ran down Foret to meet Maitaz and go down into 1800. At the end, Maitez crosses a red and you can either take a couple of turns on the red or side-slide across. Last time, I opted to side slide, but there was a girl frozen with fear in my way and two men (one her boyfriend, possibly) telling her to move, to turn ... Sam said he would have left her and Lucy recalled Sam's mantra when she got stuck: "what do you want me to do, call mountain rescue?"

I waited for her for a while, thinking about making a turn around her, but one of the men was in the way, sitting on his snowboard. In the end I went for it and managed to ski around her and him. This time, I just executed a couple of turns and crossed quite comfortably. I kept some speed going because I knew it flattened out in 1800 before the Chantelle lift, which is the one we wanted.

Practising turns in the bowl  at 2300

After Chantelle, it was the long, slow Gollet back to 1600. In places, this is so slow you can hardly keep moving, but half-way along, there's a really steep section, which holds little fear for me now. Even the last steep run down into 1600 was completed comfortably. The lifts in 1600 all have steep sections immediately in front of them. For learners, it's not the ideal place.

This was a great day for me, I felt as if I'd made a breakthrough with my skiing and I still had some life in my legs. Lucy thought I should have finished on Renard.

Margaret takes a look at Arcs 1600

We have told Margaret a great deal about Arcs 1600 and about the funicular railway, so today we decided that she should take a look for herself.

Sam and Lucy went off skiing on their own, while we took the BMW down to Bourg for a run and parked up at the funicular. It costs 12 Euros for a return ticket on the funicular (it's included in my ski pass), so it's quite expensive.

The plan was for Margaret to spend an hour or so looking around Arc 1600 (not much to see), while I spent some time skiing to "put some miles" into my achy legs.

I left her at the bottom of Cachette and I'd decided to just get the lift up and ski down Belvedere and Arpette a couple of times, which is exactly what I did. It's odd skiing on your own, you do feel a little exposed, but it meant I could take my time and stop if needed. I was soon feeling it on my legs, so I did stop a couple of times. I practised some side sliding on the steep bit down to the bottom of the lift; also got my turns in so I kept control and didn't fall.

Second time came down, I saw Margaret standing at the bottom. She'd seen me ski down and so I decided to ski down the steep bank to join her on the path. Now such instances of bravado have been known to go wrong in the past, most recently on Thursday when, during my first day in Sammy Ski School, we were allowed a break. Lucy skied down a steep chute and skidded to a stop at the bottom near the cafe and I thought "that doesn't look too hard." So, instead of taking off my skies and walking down, I followed Lucy, failed to skid to a complete halt and ended up embracing a sturdy litter bin that might well have been placed there to save novice skiers from their own folly.

Today, I could easily have done a flip over the fence at the bottom and ended in a heap next to Margaret, but the gods of the ski were with me and I was able to ski forward down the narrow chute, turn, engage both edges and come to an impressive halt only a few feet from where I'd planned to end up. Margaret thought I'd looked the part coming down, she'd clearly missed the bit where I'd nearly taken out the small child and mistaken the panic braking for an impressive skid stop.

Well, good to quit while I was ahead and despite only a couple of runs, my legs were near gone. Margaret was cold sitting outside, so I gave her my ski jacket, but then I was cold, so we sat inside and ordered drinks and food. I'd texted Sam and Lucy to say where we were and they joined us midway through our pizza.

Sam has been cooking every night, so today I said I'd make dinner. Margaret and I took the funicular down and headed to the supermarket (Super U) where we stocked up with a box of Merlot (5 litres for less than the price of a return ticket on the funicular) and the ingredients for broccoli pasta, while turned out quite well.

It’s snowing, we're in the Alps - no surprise there then

Margaret has several wishes to fulfill this holiday. She had wanted to try snowshoeing, she had wanted it to snow and she wanted to see Roxy (aka Maurice), the very smelly farm dog.

On Saturday night and through Sunday, the snow wish was granted as it snowed pretty steadily all night and through part of Sunday. I was woken at 5am by the snowplough, which reaches the highest point of the village and the end of its run just outside Maison Blueski.

It pushes the snow into a road-blocking bank just above our house and the farmer then has to clear it to get to his higher fields. He often does this by driving a tractor straight through it or sometimes by means of his mechanical shovel. Anyway, the snowplough turns round amid revving engine and a bleeping reversing alarm.

It was nice to see the trees covered with snow and in the afternoon we saw a small herd of deer moving down through the trees towards some open, snow-covered, pasture.

Second day in Sammy Ski School

After my weak performance on Thursday, I think I may have been put into the special measures section of SSS.

It was a lovely day and I was keen to ski, but a little nervous that a couple of days earlier my legs had basically given up after three hours.

Sam had chosen some different runs and there was minimal gradient and maximum width. I was determined to focus on the advice a little more. I can see how body position affects the dynamics of skiing and not leaning forward enough is my biggest crime.

So I'm trying to ski as if I'm carrying an invisible tray of drinks (these are the tricks Sam's Ski School plays on its pupils), pointing my shoulder downhill and planting ski poles on the inside of my turns.

We went up Cachette, skied down Belvedere to the Arpette lift at 2413m then down into the bowl. It was lovely and sunny with no wind in the bowl and I could see the snow really well. We went all the way down the Plan Blue run to the Arcabulle lift which takes you up to 2600m, then there's a long gentle blue called Col de la Chal (which is so flat you have to skate in places) then the steeper, but wide, Vallee de l'Arc back down to bottom of Arcabulle.

We did that a couple of times and I felt I was skiing pretty well. On the second run, I started to feel it in my legs, so suggested a cafe break. Sam left to to find Lucy and when they got back, we decided to ski down into 1950 for lunch. Of the four Les Arcs resorts, 1950 is the most pretty (and also the most expensive). You can ski through the resort and it's really nice cruising past expensive shops and restaurants.

Chilling in the sun above 1950

From 1950, there's a steeper blue down to the Comborciere lift and I was starting to feel my legs tiring by the time I got to the lift. The sunny sky had gone and as we got up to the top of Belvedere, the light was flat and a snowstorm was coming.

It was really tricky to see the snow at the top and, to make matters worse, the piste was quite rutted and steep, so it was hard work down to the smooth bit. We took it steady down Arpette to 1600, but my legs had gone again and I fell for first time on the steep bit just above the resort, losing both skis. I was really shattered.

That night, we had Morteau sausage with mustard and gherkins, boiled potatoes and cabbage. Margaret has voted it the best meal of the holiday.