Explore europe in a campervan

We saw the season to an end with some style - but with one less person in our on-piste party.  Steele unfortunately had a pan-accident with some boiling water and pasta which badly burned his foot and he was unable to snowboard for the last few days.  If there had been any way to get on a snowboard he definitely would have done so his readiness to stay in the van told us just how bad his foot was.  No photos here because it’s too nasty-looking.

So we were down to three and it seemed our confidence had peaked the previous week so we took it pretty easy.  Julie and I had one last go on the blue jump before declaring it ‘done’ for this time, and the red jump Simon had been getting higher on disappeared under a crazy arrangement of rails.  We managed quite a few hours on the snow though - even though it was disappearing almost before our eyes - and felt we’d made the most of our time.

With Steele stuck at home we had to focus on socialising a bit more and had some great communal van dinners and the odd barrel of red wine. Oops.  We had good enough weather for a lovely barbeque - a very professional one actually that began with a serious gas barbeque and ended with marshmallows over the campfire! Just like last year the car park at Les Prodains got more and more empty and we were undisturbed other than the odd patrol by the police.

Sunday was the very last day that the lifts up the mountain were open and the plan to snowboard non-stop until the last lift was shelved quite happily in favour of a few beers at Chez Flo bar in Avoriaz.  I’m not sure how we managed not to notice this party going on last year, but this time Mike and Sarah had mentioned the mission to ‘drink the bar dry’!  Steele’s foot had started mending just enough to get a shoe on so he got on the gondola and met us at the bar.  The atmosphere was great and the bar’s close enough to the lifts that you can still do a few runs and return quickly for the next round.  We caught up with Sarah and Mike and heard that their employers are looking for chalet staff for next season.  Tempting but we wouldn’t want to be out of the UK for Christmas…

So that was our (half) season in the Portes du Soleil finished.  It was colder than last year, but we had more power than last year and we did work more than last year.  The van broke more and we spent more time at garages, less time at campsites and more time outside a certain hotel getting internet!  My knees crunch more, but I did more jumps; Simon’s finger now bends less, but he did more grabs.  We had more flapjacks, less baguettes and butter and mostly just pasta!

Through the power of the internet we met Julie and Steele, and Mike, Kathryn and Lucy.  From the pull of the snow we met Sarah and Mike again.  But despite several text messages we didn’t manage to catch up with Charlotte.  Maybe next time…

Then we headed home…..

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 11:51 pm and is filed under Diary, Snowboarding, 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.