No injuries to report

Today has been our last day at Camping Champ du Moulin in the French Alps. Initially I'd been worried about our lack of planning which meant we'd be skiing without lessons. I fully expected at least one of us would break a limb. But we haven't.

It was a shaky start and I almost called it a day on the first morning, but five mornings of skiing later we've really progressed and I've felt quite confident by the time we have left the slope for a late lunch for the last two days.

Knowing how to stop is everything. The rest has just come from experimenting. I'm so proud of what we've accomplished on our own, and I know we've enjoyed the holiday more for the freedom that we wouldn't have had if we'd been tied to four hours of lessons every day.

Skiing can be very expensive but we've saved money everywhere. We bought our ski boots from TK Maxx for £35 and £25. The skis followed months later from Decathlon; they were last season's and reduced to £69. So no ski hire costs have been incurred. Camping here has cost around £26 per night and there's not even the need to buy a ski pass if you're only going to be using the beginner slopes.

We've enjoyed the week so much that we've booked to come back in February.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

West coast of France campervan tour

Image
Having decided there's no need to travel half way across a country between camping stays, to mix things up a bit, this summer's fortnight holiday will be spent along France's West coast, starting at Ile d'Oleron and then heading a couple of hours south for each of our other two bases. We were worried about a reported two hour delay near to the Folkestone Channel Tunnel terminal and so, before the Dartford Crossing, we put back our scheduled train by 90 minutes. The traffic was just clearing as we got nearer and as it turns out we'd have been ten minutes early for our original booking. The delay meant it was already 10.30pm by the time we were on French roads and wouldn't reach our chosen aire, Neufchattel en Bray, until 1am. Unfortunately the aire was completely full and so we had no choice but to continue. We arrived at our second choice of aire at 3am. The two extra hours drive through the night meant two hours less the following day though. We d
Read more

Probably the best aire in France

Image
  Driving days are rarely exciting - we're not ones for stopping to sight see when we've an ultimate destination to get to. So the discovery of La Chute du Grand Baou for our pre-ferry crossing stopover was the best surprise.  While Tony was driving south through France I was researching aires that would leave us with a short drive the next morning and I had a shortlist of three. La Chute du Grad Baou was top choice because of a promised waterfall. I thought I could make out people swimming in one of the website's photos and I'm never one to turn down an opportunity for wild swimming.  We arrived in Brignoles at around 5pm and popped into Lidl to do a small shop for food and wine for that evening. Then we filled up with diesel before heading 15 minutes north to the aire. A short dirt track leads down to a small restaurant with tables outside. To the side are three huge terraced fields for motorhomes. There was one other motorhome there already, hugging the shade from th
Read more

Valencia

When I came to add our latest trip, I noted that the last blog entry was October 2022. Oops. We've been much better at keeping our YouTube channel  up to date. There you'll find at least half a dozen videos from the summer of 2023 when we went 'Huttopia Hopping' - that is to say we stayed on six different Huttopia campsites over our six-week road trip, from the Atlantic coast, across the Pyrenees and over to the Mediterranean. Back to the present and we're just home from nine nights on the continent. Our ultimate destination was Valencia where we spent five nights at Devesa Gardens.  We didn't rush our drive down, though I guess some would say we did. We stayed on a Camping-Car Park about an hour south of Paris for night one. Knowing it would be 10/11pm when we went through Paris we thought the roads would be quiet. They were not and I wouldn't ever want to go this way again.  The Camping-Car Park at Souppes Sur Loing was a nice peaceful site. Only two other
Read more