Lovely sunrise, would have been better to stay asleep though… too many creaking fenders.

Our yacht sailing of previous blogs has been in Greece and Turkey and whilst we have found the odd busy harbour, this is in a different league. Lots of yachts around, ribs towing tubes and jetskis like wasps.

The best spot by far was a nuclear submarine.

Hopefully I am not going to be in trouble for revealing its location.

Packed into a crowded and expensive marina for the night, but compensated by lots of shops and restaurants.

Finally here is a picture of our boat for the week. Complete with gear drying from our afternoon swim stop.

Funny how you never see a superyacht with wet towels on the guard rails?

Here we are at Port Pin Roland ready to set off on a week’s sailing off the French coast.

We travelled down by Eurostar to Marseilles, then a local train and finally a taxi. We arrived in plenty of time to check the boat… Experience says this is time well spent and we proved it again this time… spotted a loose VHF antenna so the charter guys went up the mast to fix it.

So we are all ready to set off in the morning.

We headed out to eat after I had finished Thursdays post. We noticed that the restaurant we had eaten in the first night had some sort of music on, so we thought we would go there and have a fondue. The music turned out to be a guy who handed round a “menu” of songs you could request. He mentioned that he had a spare microphone so that if you wanted to you could join in with your request…. luckily there were all very French songs so there was no risk of us joining in (Puff Le Dragon Magique was not on the list). lots of people got into the spirit of the thing and a few parents got up to embarrass their children. Even the chef came out an joined in at one point.

His singing was not bad, but his cooking was better.

On our last days we decided to do a bit of a tour of our favorite places on the last day. The Weather was starting to cloud over so plan a was to go over to go over to Orelle and stay above the clouds.

Up high the conditions remain brilliant but the lower than average now depth was really beginning to show once again lower down. We saw a few lift queues, but with the prevalence of 6 man and 8 man express chairs whey never take more than 5 minutes, and typically at least half the people are not actually trying to get on the lift, they are standing around debating whether Pierre or Martine is going to sit next to Aunt Odette this time, or have there mobile phones shoved in their helmets trying to locate the half of their family that clearly got confused by the concept of “take the left fork”…

While I am on a rant, it is worth noting that the art of putting your skis neatly seems to be dying out…

Anyway, another great “self” in the Orelle Valley. A bit odd to sit there eating lunch knowing that if the chairlift back over stops working then it is 127km by road back to Mottaret…

A visit to the BK park on the way back but the cloud was coming in and the light went flat making the last hour skiing back much less fun. Hard to be disappointed when we have had near perfect weather all week.

Up early the next morning for an uneventful train journey home.

The train was of course full…. I did however get my answer as to why Eurostar don’t run more trains to the Alps at busy times. The Southern French railways use a different power standard and they only have 5 trains equipped to operate on all 3 voltages needed along the route. 2 are on the Marseille route and 3 are on the alps. And there was me thinking it was only the UK railways that had incompatible systems…

Another great week, made even more jaw droppingly expensive than usual by the exchange rate. I’m lucky enough to be able to have the choice, and I think it is worth it.

We first went skiing with these two 11 years ago when they were so small they could not carry there own skis from the apartment to ski school.

Now I find it really hard to keep up with them on the black runs…

I mentioned the apartment at the start of the week. Here is a picture from the other side of the resort..

The block we are staying in is in the centre at the top of the picture and you can see the lift coming down to the block below, where there are several good restaurants, a supermarket and ski shops. We can ski in and out onto the run you can see going past behind the building, which is the main run down from  Saulire into Mottaret. It is hard to think of a better situated apartment, sadly it is reasonably tricky to think of a worse layout for the apartment itself….

Had my new visor on today. The original had delaminated so I had to buy a spare and then the screws that hold it on sheared….. found a guy in a ski shop who saw drilling out M4 screws a challenge, and managed to fix it for me, so nice to find someone who wants to fix something rather than just sell you this year’s fashion. I found this handy reflective surface to take a selfie in….

During our skiing today we were reminded a few times of how thin the snow is for this time of year. Most of the time up high we have had great conditions but as you get lower there are a few bare patches that remind us of the typical conditions we used to get in January. Normally at this time of year this view would be all white.

You’ll also notice the rather cool helmet cover (I assume it is a dragon?). We have a seen a good number of people skiing in onesies as well. I was going to ask this guy where he got his reindeer onesie as I thought one might suit me. What do you think?

At lunch we discovered another good ‘self’ has been turned into a posh restaurant (you needed  reservation) with a “snack” below. We went for the snack and sat in those deckchairs that are impossible to get out of… To be fair the Hotdog Savoyarde was excellent. A touch heavy on the mustard but I am sure I will be able to taste something else soon. Can’t actually think of a self service place left in the Meribel valley now, it is turning into Courchevel….

Skied the high runs about Courchevel (sorry ‘courch’) in the afternoon.

Some afternoon sunshine on Saulire…

I added another video of the jump to yesterdays post after I managed to get it to upload….

Today we decided to go back to Val Thorens to finish the parts we did not visit on Monday. We headed up to Cime Caron. The fact that anybody managed to build a cable car top station here continues to impress, and it has been here a few years (apparently it was the largest in the world when built in 1982).

The combe de caron black piste was too moguled for my taste so we stuck to the red and did the lower black.

Someone in BMWs marketing department obviously likes Val Thorens as there seems to be a fair amount of Mini promotion going on.

This 4 wheel drive rechargeable hybrid soft roader wearing a Mini badge is surely as far away from Sir Leonard Lord and Sir Alec Issigonis’ original vision as it is possible to get? They have created an ice track you can test drive them on as well… tempting, but I think I would rather ski….

We did the last 3000m+ peak after lunch. Here is the view

Returned before our legs were completely spent today to leave energy for a  run down Mont Valon. The track at the top does not get any better….

First up here is last nights sledging video.. sorry for the poor quality but upload speed is not good here.

Having not made it over to La Masse last year we decided we should go and ski over there today. The plan was working well until we found that the second half of the gondola was out of order… this put everybody in a massive queue for an ancient 3  man lift, and just as we got to the front of it the gondola reopened….oh well.

Here is the view from the top of La Masse to Les Menuires below. With Mont Blanc in the far distance. We are pleased to report that the self at the top still serves great lunches at what are reasonable prices for a mountain..

The whole area did feel very crowded and we found a few lift queues. Not sure why this is,  but we were perhaps spoiled yesterday.

Anyway, after a few run down the excellent Masse black we headed over to the other side of Les Menuires for the afternoon sunshine, where there were far fewer people, and had some fun in “BK park” They have some new jumps at the end, which probably are not designed for people old enough to know better but….

Wind had dropped a bit so we headed over to VT (Val Thorens to you old people). First stop was the glacier lift at the top of Peclet. The map does not list its height, but it looks like plenty to me.

The run off the top is a steep black piste but at this height the now is hard, but not icy. The chairlift is suitably terrifying to keep the crowds down…

Lunch at the waffle stop as usual, the waffles are the same, but I swear the lady making them was not born when we first came here (I was going to ask her but nobody else liked that plan). See previous years for a picture of the waffle place, it won’t have changed, but this year we have live music as well. Of course when I say live I mean a lady who can sing and operate an MP3 player at the same time…

There is a new link over to the 4th Valley, Orelle, so we took that. At 3002 metres it was a touch windy, but the views from up here are worth the effort.

The snow over in this valley is incredibly good, and the screaming wind of the cols seems to keep the crowds away, but once you ski the first 100m it is fine. The place is deserted.

This area took us up to the highest point in the 3 valleys at 3230m. I would post the picture, but the cloud was starting to build by this time, so think top of one cloud viewed through the bottom of another one moving at high speed mixed with blown snow and you really don’t need the picture….

This evening’s madness was sledging again. Not content with a small slope to injure children on they have moved on to open a chair lift this year to give a 2km floodlit sledge run. This increases the risk of accident to a whole new level. Even the French are making helmets compulsory….

We rented the last sledge in town and had a go. I have some helmet camera video of a pretty good wipeout I will try and load for tomorrow.

Here we are back in Meribel Mottaret. The good news is that the Eurostar was so uneventful I’m not going to blog about it… We are staying the other side of Mottaret to the part we have stayed in for the last few years. Here is the view from the window.

The cute thing about these rather faceless Pierre er Vacance apartments is that they are connected to the main centre of Mottaret by a lift which runs 24 hours, so we have easy access to shops and restaurants.

The weather was OK today but a breeze at altitude. We went to La Sittelle (known as Tarte o pomme…) cafe for lunch but it has been taken over by the same people who run (and ruined) Pierre Plats.

The really good self has been replaced by a rather overpriced restaurant. When we came here 25 years ago it didn’t even have inside toilets! This company now owns 6 places in the valley… we will be avoiding them. Really good family run cafes where you can get  a decent lunch are a really important part of skiing for us. They are always expensive, but you are getting good food half way up a mountain! If they are all going to end up the same poor value places then that is rather worrying…

Other than that a great day’s skiing if you don’t mind the 50mph winds on top of Saulire…

Found a much better place for dinner… where is everybody else though?

…

Our last day of skiing dawned grey and dreary, sadly this had been forecast all week and the forecast was accurate for once. We went up to see if we could get above the cloud, but although we saw one inviting hole in the murk to ski in, we ended up skiing from the very top in clouds so thick you could not see from one piste marker to the next. On several occasions we had to stop to discuss which way was down. Much coffee was drunk….

In the afternoon we skied below the trees to be able to have some chance of seeing, which limits us mainly to the easy slopes. We stopped by the Inuit trail area set up for kids. If we gloss over the minor issue of foam penguins on a piste marked “inuit” I am really impressed by these areas. When DD1 and DD2 were small we took them to Norway where they do a lot for families and children. At the time none of the French resorts we were familiar with had anything at all but they seem to have spotted the opportunity and now Meribel at least has two areas set up as fun ski trails for kids and one has an area with swings and snow slides where they can take a break from skiing and just play. As we went past there were some Huskys that had been brought over for children to see and pet. One or two of the dogs seemed to be enjoying the experience but others seemed to be wondering when they could leave and do some running around…

Not the best day’s skiing to end on, but all in all a good week, we skied 244.5km according to my Navionics app, over 88 runs and we got on a lift 82 times…

And so the next morning down to Moutier for the Eurostar home..

It is a bit of a pain lugging all the luggage ans stashing it on the train but you don’t have to touch it again until ashford… Usually. About 30  minutes before we got to Lille they announced that there had been a security problem and all the checks must be re-done at Lille meaning we would have to take all our bags off, have them x-rayed again and then load them back on. As we pulled into Lille we got all the bags out of the racks ready to get off. Then a new announcement, change of plan, they are just going to bring sniffer dogs on, so we put all the bags back, then silence for a bit. Then a new announcement [have you guessed] another new plan, we do need to get the bags off…. So eventually we get everything off the train and lug it upstairs (no escalators switched on) and wait in a queue while 700 people have their passports checked and bags scanned…

We roll into Ashford 2 hours late, with a good chunk of this time being spent listening to announcements apologising for the problem at Lille. Now when BA messed us about last year they left us to argue for weeks before giving us compensation. In the case of Eurostar, at 10AM the next morning I get this email:

Hello,

First of all, we’d like to apologise for the delay to your recent Eurostar journey. We’re always working to make sure our trains are punctual and we’re very sorry that yours arrived late.

To apologise for the inconvenience, we’d like to offer you some compensation, which you can claim quickly and easily at compensation.eurostar.com. All you’ll need is the booking reference and individual ticket number (which are both on your ticket) to make a claim. If you’d like to read up about our Compensation Policy, take a look at our Help Centre at eurostar.com.

If you’d like to claim for any expenses, please get in touch with your travel insurance provider, who’ll be able to help you with your claim.

Once again, we’re very sorry for the delay and hope we can welcome you on board again soon.

Kind regards,

The Eurostar team
—————–

Bit of a difference?

The compensation will partially fund us traveling with Eurostar again next year I expect. No travel service can be perfect, how you deal with the problems defines how your customers feel about travelling with you again.

Day 3 of the sunny interval promised on Sunday that started on Tuesday dawned bright and clear.
We headed over to ski La Face, the run built to be the ladies downhill for the 1992 winter olympics. It is a nice black run but was quite challenging as it had not been bashed recently so the snow was quite bumpy. Over in this area we found our first real lift queue. We probably waited just over 5 minutes, which is not really a queue but longer than we have seen up to now.
The other interesting observation is the absence of snowboards. There was a time in the late 90s when you might have thought that snowboarders would soon outnumber skiers. But we now only see a handful of them, even in a snowboarding stronghold like Val Thorens. Can you spot any here?

The other things we have noticed is that almost everyone wears helmets, but you’ll find more non helmet wearers in Val Thorens and Courcheval than in Meribel we have no idea why this is. You’ll find vastly more fur trimmed hoods in Courcheval as well as a little more retro 80s skiwear. I’ll make a chart….

It is possible that the lack of popularity of snowboarding is linked to the rise in popularity of freestyle skiing, and certainly the number of ‘fun parks’ continues to grow. In Courcheval 1650 they have made a ravine into a massive half pipe like run. You cannot imagine what this does to your knees.

In Courcheval 1850 today we came across one of the “giant airbags” that you can use for jumping into wearing skis, but also one that you jump onto sitting in a giant innertube.

Despite all of these distractions we still managed to ski a lot today.