Week 1 18th - 24th Jan
18 Jan 2023
7am departure for our drive down the east coast. Lovely drive down in sunshine.
Scotch Corner and Trumpington for charging stops. Drove to Umbra restaurant to pick up the keys from Claire and then parked at space 48 flat 14 Matilda Gardens. Booked through JustPark at £14 per day.
We sorted Claire’s IKEA cupboards before Claire came home then Victoria pub for dinner. Nice place and food.
19 Jan 2023
A day to visit IKEA Greenwich and get Claire’s storage sorted. Charged at the nearby superchargers and then joined Kay and Claire in the store. Lunch whilst we were there, and a full car to get home with!
Horrendous journey back to the flat with a very heavily laden car. The Blackwall tunnel was closed so a 15 minute journey became 2 hours and 15 minutes. We were all very relieved to get home. Got lots of construction done but not as much as we would have if not for the tunnel…ggrrhh!
20 Jan 2023
Departed about 6.30 am for a straight forward run to Eurotunnel at Folkestone. Plenty of time to charge at the terminal and got a train about 10am.
Easy trip down through France. Charged at Reims and then coaxed the Tesla all the way to Dijon. We are learning to trust the predicted arrival charge. 16 Tesla chargers at the IBIS Styles Hotel at Dijon - so convenient!
21 Jan 2023
Breakfast just after 7am and then on the road to Chatel. Some slow sections due to snow on the A6, with lots of snow ploughs going south. We charged up at Archamps and then continued on up the hill to Chatel arriving there early afternoon.
Really good to see Sue and Squads again and their lovely apartment.
We all took the Tesla down to Intermarche to do a big shop for the week so that we didn’t have to carry heavy things up the hill. We collected skis from Intersport (leaving them there for the morning) and ski passes from the automat. The Grahams arrived about 7.30pm. Sue cooked, dinner in the apartment.
22 Jan 2023
Sue wasn’t skiing so Squads led the 4 of us up the hill at Superchatel and we had some good skiing although the visibility was poor at times. Steve, Howard and I skied back to the apartment - tricky!
Dinner was at a small family run Savoyard restaurant in the village.
23 Jan 2023
Skiing out from the apartment was not easy. Howard fell. Not doing that again.
Normally we would have skied out of Superchatel to get to Linda BUT a landslide has taken a lift out for the season thus breaking the Portes de Soleil route. Thus we had to take the ski bus to Linga. Then we found that the top Ecole d’Alpin lift was closed so we had to ski in a restricted area all day but it worked really well. Great weather and with nearly empty slopes we were all able to do our own thing, red or blue slopes. Coffee and lunch was at a super little mountain restaurant with a fantastic open fire - almost all to ourselves because of the lift being broken.
24 Jan 2023
Ski bus to Pre de Joux and then headed towards Avoriaz. Nasty lumpy blue on the way down. We didn’t get over the ridge down to Avoriaz but instead skied into the next valley and lunched at the Goat Village. Back to Pre de Joux and the ski bus back to Chatel.
Apres ski in a rather antiseptic bar - Steve’s favourite was shut - then Dinner at Cafe Zeph. We both had Berthoud which is a local specialty, basically a bowl of molten cheese with meats and potatoes - fab!
