We left Ashford about 07.30 ish and enjoyed a smooth trip to Lyon Part Dieu via paris, when it all suddenly almost ended in disaster. We kindly waited till last to get off the train so that we wouldn't bother the other passengers with our bulky board bags and camping gear. Suddenly a man started to assist me with some urgency, practcally throwing my bag down the stairs. I got off the train and the doors almost shut on me.
This was a major problem as Ian was still on the train which appeared to be imminently departing for Perrache.
I pressed the button for the door but nothing happened. Meanwhile on the train Ian was becomming quite alarmed , thinking to himself, "**** I've got to get off!"
I shouted at some men in uniforms and they appeared to radio somthing through. This clearly had nothing to do with Ians predicament as the train started to move!
At this point Ian thought to himself, " I really need to get off now" and decided to wrench open the doors!
I was quite suprised when the doors came open and Ian threw all his stuff from the moving train and leapt out, the guards and other people on the platform looked quite suprised to. The train carried on picking up pace to its cruising speed of somewhere near 200mph with the doors of carriage 8 wide open.
I thought this was a brilliant manoever by Ian as it would have been a nightmare trying to meet up with him in Perrache...wherever it may be.
We got the car which was a rather snazzy silver Nissan Pixo and drove to the Alps without further incident, setting up camp at Camping Piat which is run by the charming Sylvie Barrerre.


On our way we had purchased some Beers at the Carrefoure in Moutiers, we also got a tub of Lentils with some sauce for me and Ian had a pasta salad. This was because we had no gas to cook with, the officious swines on Eurostar confiscated it.
We drank our Beers and chatted by the tent, I had a couple of bottles of Goudale (i highly recommend this strong bierre blond) and Ian drank about a million warm, 33 exports ( He highly recommends this rotten French lager and soon developed quite a mound of them by our tent). Suddenly this chubby bearded fellow sporting Bart Simpson pyjamas emerges from the next door tent and gives us a telling off in French, I manage to catch the word Dormir and deduce from this that we could be disturbing his sleep. We assure him that we will be quiet, although it should be noted that we weren't being noisy anyway. The mans name was Monsieur Grumpy. The next day he gives Ian a cheerfull Bonjour. Over the course of the week Ian grows quite close to M. Grumpy and thy share many a Bonjour and Bonsoir. M. Grumpy wears the same Bart Simpson pyjamas every evening for the rest of the week, they seem to be his favourites.
Towrds the end of the week an English couple roll up and steal grumpys parking spot and play music on their car stereo!!
We sit there drinking our beers (now cold, we discovered a handy Alpine stream in which we could chill them), waiting for Grumpy to get back expecting him to go absolutely mental when he sees what they have done and then playing music as well!!
He pulls up and we wait in anticipation. Nothing. He parks in a different spot and they turn their music off a little while later.
they were lucky they turned it off when they did though, because we could see Madame Grumpy sitting in her chair reading the newspaper looking like she was getting very irritable indeed.


The first day boarding was ok, lovely scenery etc, I was not on top form though falling over and cutting my arm and experiencing some serious problems with my board pulling to the left for no apparent reason.
We went to the Pleisure bar at Courcheval 1550 and met a man called Dave who takes people out boarding and he gave us some very handy tips for routes and when certain lifts are open.


Over the course of the week my boarding improved dramatically and we had some amazing runs from top altitude of 2750 metres, the scenery was spectacular and on several days we boarded for about 30kms down the mountain on a variety of terrains including rocky cinder tracks, woodland paths, dug out bike tracks with sweeping berms and mountain roads. The cinder tracks varied in rockyness and steepness (as did all the tracks). As we boarded down walkers and bikers would stare in amazement and often ask what we were doing. One slightly older gentleman was less impressed though. Ian came clattering down the track kicking up dust and rocks, catching him by suprise, the man leapt off the track letting out a very feminine involuntary scream. I came down a bit behind Ian and saw him looking all nervy and shaken so gave him an especially friendly Bonjour and merci for getting out of the way, he didn't reply or even smile at me.


We were also recognized by many of the people supervising the chair lifts and cable cars who were very friendly and helpfull. On the last day we arrived at the Verdons lift in Courcheval 1850 and were greeted by the tanned lift operateur with a cheery, " Ah ere comes team crazee" (in a French accent).
We were well chuffed we had a rep on la Montagne!
We saw lots of wildlife whilst we were there,including eagles, vultures, unusual birds and insects, nasty little red chutney ants that swarmed in our Beurre president ruining our breakfast baguettes, but best of all was the Marmotte. The Marmotte is a chubby little creature that looks a bit like a Beaver, we saw about 5 of them, generally on the higher slopes. At times they seemed quite tame getting to within 5 metres of you, but the second you tried to get your camera out they would scamper into the rocks.


On the last day it was bit wet, but we had the consolation of seeing some dry slope ski jumping and also a man catching a couple of trout in the lake in La Praz.
The journey back went very smoothly until we got to Lyon and had no idea where the car hire place was. we thought we had it sussed when i realised i was going down a bus lane so pulled off into a side street, an elderly French lady then pulled out in front of me causing me to slam on the brakes and go skidding towards her fearing for the Pixo and my deposit. She drove off appearing not have registered that we were ever there, we stopped about half a foot from her door!
We finally found Lyon Part Dieu station but could not find the way into the hire car place, we drove round the station once, then went round it again, only to find ourselves in an underground car park, we drove round it again only to arrive in a Taxi lane narrowly avoiding impaling the Pixo on one of those Bollards that automatically rise out of the ground, we drove round again and went into the Avis hire place... not Hertz, the man there gave us **** directions and we went round again. It was now getting very close to our drop off time of midday and we were starting to despair.
Ian went and asked a Taxi lady and we finally found it!! how could we have missed it? so obviously situated down a gravel track with no signs.


We hung about the station getting harassed by gypsies and vagabonds until it was time to depart a couple of hours later, then made our way onto Paris, lugged our gear through the Paris metro at rush hour which was Hellish (always travel as light as poss if you are going this way), had a couple of beers and made the Eurostar with about 3 minutes to spare...In retrospect we were a bit casual with our Beer drinking and should have got to the train first. Then on to Ashford and Canterbury nicely pissed on our Bavaria 8% lagers (these are suprisingly nice and well worth checking out if you ever spot them).