It was a little sad to leave our apartment in Bourg d’Osians
but also exciting to get back on the road and check out a little more of
Europe.
As our season pass for Alpe d’Huez gave us free access to
other ski resorts and with fresh snow forecasted in the coming days, we didn’t
get very far, just 20kms up the road is Les Duex Alpes. We got a fresh
dump on the 2nd night and it continued to snow lightly for the
next couple of days.
Les Deux Alpes is huge and we actually liked it better than
Alpe d’Huez. They have about the same amount of runs in km as each other
but Les Deux Alpes in sqm would be bigger. The runs are huge, really long
& really wide and so many lifts and pommers to use, you never had to line
up. Whereas Alpe d’Huez has long skinny runs which lead into flat
return tracks which require you to skate back to the village or lift system and
always, always had line ups.
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| Pole Position camping at Villenvue - Serre Chevalier |
10days later we drove to Serre Chevalier. It’s approx.
1hr drive from Les Deux Alpes and is beautiful. The chair lift system is
really well linked to 5 villages which are situated on the main mountain road
to Italy, so you can ski all day on the mountains and then have the convenience
of being in a bigger town or village at night or for non-ski days.
We stayed in Villenvue and really liked it. It was
really pretty, built on both sides of a little waterway that goes straight
through the village. It was full of yummy bakeries & restaurant’s and
has a really good vibe about it. It’s only 5kms from Briancon which is a
decent size town, with big brand shops, easy and convenient to get too and thus
made it more reasonably priced that Alpe d’Huez or Les Deux Alpes. We
stayed for 3 days here and totally enjoyed it. It has really picturesque,
nice long tree lined runs right from the top down to the village with an
excellent lift system. Not a soul in sight (ie School kids) and with
light snow at night we were able to make some fresh lines virtually every day.
We then moved onto the Italian Milky Way (via Lattea) ski
resorts. We ended up staying right on the boarder (French side) in a ski
resort town called Montgenevere as they had a really excellent camper
park. The Milky Way is made up of 5 Italian ski villages and 1 French
village. All linked by ski runs and chair lifts and as it was host to the
2006 Winter Olympics, so therefore the lift system, ski runs, services and
facilities are excellent.
It was pretty cool to wake up in the morning and have brekky
in France, board a chairlift 100m from the motorhome and get off the chair lift
in Italy.
Out of all the ski resorts we visited on this trip, if I was
to do another season in this part of France or Italy then it would be Serre
Chevalier or the Milky Way. But for next year we are tossing up Germany,
Austria or Switzerland.
No major stacks or face plants to report and yes we can
confirm we are officially addicted to the snow!
