Our first ski trip for six years. We drove the VW Tiguan to Val Thorens with two overnight stops on the way in Ashford and Macon. We dropped by to see Sue and Tony in West Wickham on the way. Overnight hotel in UK was Premier – very good. Overnights in France were Ibis Budget – disappointing, particularly for the price as they were dearer than Premier.

In Val Thorens we stayed in the Pierre et Vacances property Le Tikal. Great facilities there with a one bedroom apartment and on floor ski locker. It was ski-in and out of the building. We parked in the town’s P2 covered car park (pre-booking definitely necessary!). Directly opposite the apartment building was a supermarket, restaurant and ski equipment shop.

Alan hired skis (Elan RS 170 cm) and found them to be great, especially for short turns. There was more than enough snow on the slopes and temperatures during the day at around freezing. We had a couple of great days skiing when the sun came out and it had snowed the previous night. The high point of our trip was taking the lifts to the Col De Rosael (3000 metres) and skiing over to the Orelle valley. Most days we used the local (debutante) lift passes which gave access to some good pistes in the Val Thorens area. On Saturdays the Val Thorens lift pass is discounted and… the number of skiers is lower (changeover day).

The costs in the resort (and France generally) were high – particularly in restaurants, e,g a small cup of coffee is 5-6 Euros, a meal out is about 70 Euros. We found costs to be at least 1.5 times higher than Spain last year.

After the Saturday trip to Orelle the weather deteriorated. Heavy snow forecast for 4 days from Sunday and temperatures dropping to -14°C. We did not want to ski in those conditions and were worried about driving off the mountain (23 miles of steep, hair-pin bends) on our Wednesday departure date. We made the decision to leave on Sunday and headed home.

We stayed in the same overnight hotels on the way home. The Le Shuttle was hassle free. The M20 near Ashford was closed due to an accident so our journey to the Ashford Premier took longer than expected. We awoke in Ashford to a very cold day and lots of ice on the roads. Our plan to visit Derek and Bev near Bognor Regis were impacted by closure of the A27 but we did make it albeit a bit late. The journey home from Sussex was relatively uneventful with just one closed road (A29). We reached Exmoor about 16:30 and had to carefully drive to home as the roads were wet and temperatures were falling below zero. It was good to get home to find no disasters other than mice having helped themselves to a bag of grass seed stored in the garage!

Caroline had a bad cold and very sore throat but this eased by morning. Then it started snowing heavily….