Chaos in Chatel - Half term is here

Posted by DaveBurrows 13th February 2012

They’ve arrived. 

I walked out of the apartment this morning and scene of French chaos greets me.  Three cars with their bonnets open and their owners slipping about on the ice, juggling with jump leads.  Another car owner faffing about with bits of cardboard, trying to drive directly up a sheet ice slope without snow tyres.  Another guy taking relentless run ups trying to drive out of said iced up driveway, making it even more slippery in the process.  Torville and Dean could skate on our driveway at the moment.

Add this all to the herd of elephants that have apparently moved in above me and the Dutch drinking songs being sung at 1am this morning.  Half term is here.

To be fair to the tourists that are abandoning cars all over Chatel at the moment, it was -18 degrees this morning and La Smart car only just started, which is an improvement on last week when the temperatures dipped into the minus twenties.  At -25 degrees, it was completely not interested and had to be jump started every day. 

Winters here are brutal on cars.  Reliability and function are paramount in choosing a car to live with all year round.  It’s due to snow next week too which will be very interesting because the village is salting the roads much less than in previous year which will mean epic amounts of faffing about which snowchains.

Dave Burrows evening shot from the supermarketThe extreme cold is getting to the humans too.  I skied to work the other day because the car refused to start.  Normally, skiing to work is a nice thing and gets you nicely prepared for the day.  However, -28 degrees at the top of the Morclan lift in Super Chatel was something else.  It took an hour for my hands to start feeling normal again after that.

I nipped down to Monthey yesterday and picked myself up a thin down jacket which hopefully is going to keep me warmer and not make me look too fat, as well as investing in two oversized wooly snoods at H&M for going to the pub use. 

Work starts in earnest tomorrow and the ski school is stacked out with work for the next 3 weeks.  We’ve had to draft in extra instructors to cope with the demand which is a change from last year when we were all scrapping for work.

I thought I’d get this blog in early because the chances are that I won’t be able to for the next few weeks.  See you in March Mad Dog Ski. x

 

About the author

I was hooked on skiing from the moment that I went on a school ski trip to Austria when I was 14.  I’m 33 now and I’ve finally made my dream of living in the Alps a reality.  I’m a ski instructor working in Morgins in Switzerland and living just over the border in Chatel in France. The missus is moving out here with me along with our sheepdog, Ollie. We love this little corner of the Portes du Soleil and plan to stay out here full time after the ski season.

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