We had to fly this year, due to a long, and frankly dull story, we missed out on the ski train. This means we paid a fortune to navigate stupidly busy airports either end of a stupidly busy flight….

Avoriaz is a car free resort, so the transfer dropped us at a reception area, where according to the brochure, we should be greeted and transferred by a traditional horsedrawn sleigh to our apartment. Of course the reality is a little more “French” than that, and involves a lot of people standing around with no clear indication as to how you actually get anywhere, After 30 minutes or so of not getting anywhere we had a 5 minute sleigh ride, actually pulled by a horse to be fair, to our apartment. It was getting dark and snowing so I am afraid you don’t get a picture of the horse… I’ll try and grab one later in the week.

Avoriaz is celebrating 50 years since it was created. It is a purpose built resort 500m above the “real” town of Morzine. We calculated that we first skied here 26 years ago. We were staying in Morzine, but we came up here to ski at least once. We came back the following year as well, so that means we must have been here when they were celebrating 25 years…. this is a little alarming…

Anyway, skis rented, breakfast and chocolate for eating on chairlifts bought, we retired to a restaurant called the “boule de neige”. Complete with old wooden skis nailed to the wall (the skis are older than the resort, let alone the restaurant)

I had one of the best Tartiflettes I have had… It looked this this, briefly before I eat it….

Now I must go and put my phone with my GPS tracking app, my GoPro helmet cam, the spare batteries, the WiFi remote for the gopro, my other camera all on charge. None of these things were imaginable when we first came here…. but then again, neither were blogs…..