Explore europe in a campervan

It has been a busy couple of days so I’ll try to be brief!

We spent Friday night at a motorhome ‘aire de service’ in Poligny.  This is a service area where motorhomes can get water and dump waste - a municipal site outside a campsite in this instance, but they can be council-run or private.  You can stay here for 24 hours so, although there were no other vans and the campsite was closed, we knew we were somewhere that we could park officially which gives peace of mind.

The drive south took us by surprise when we found ourselves in mountains even before we hit Geneva! We took motorway toll roads last year but this time avoided the €90+ charge.  Fortunately the mountain pass, Col de la Faucille, was open and passable, albeit very slowly.

The route took us through Geneva, right past the site of the Hadron Particle Collider, which must have been right underneath us as I think it has a 3 mile diameter.  A quick border crossing into Switzerland and straight out without even a look at a customs or police officer and we were away

We stopped at Cluses to fill up on LPG (liquid petroleum gas) to run our heating and oven, then continued onto the winding roads to Morzine.  Unfortunately we hit traffic immediately and crawled for the next 2 hours with emergency vehicles passing.  It was good to see there were no cars in trouble when we finally passed the spot causing the hold-up.  It appeared some electricity cables had come down, but there were plenty of emergency services on the scene.

Finally!  It was a relief to see the sign welcoming us to the Portes du Soleil resort.  We took the long route through the town to see the old, familiar sights and had a look in the sports centre car park on the way past.  A couple of big motorhomes but none of our friends’ vans from last year to be seen yet.  Then straight to the campsite, Le Solerey, in St Jean d’Aulps up the road.  This was a big launch weekend for the site Simon has been working on and we really needed some solid internet.  Through my bad French and the site owner’s much-better English we were on their wireless connection and booked in.

I forgot to say the snow was falling continuously from mid-afternoon and we have woken today to a good foot of new snow on the ground and on the van.  I’ve just dug most of it away while Simon continues working and now I’m exhausted.  We hoped to get on the slopes today, but may have to wait to get our lift passses organised.  We’re in contact with a local chalet-owner who we hope will allow us to use their internet connection.  Fingers crossed!

If you’re stuck inside avoiding the cold, rain or snow you might like to take a look at the website Simon has been developing for a local teddy bear shop in Corfe Castle.  Click here to see the brand new range of Charlie Bears that became available today.  I have a Lucy Bear panda who has come travelling with us!

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 6:22 pm and is filed under Diary, Campsites & wild camping, Travel, Campervan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.