Another year another destination ... so far we had stuck to France, but after the sections of the haute route that Bryon and I had done, it was not by chance that I started looking at Switzerland and in particular the St Bernard valley, and Verbier.We came upon an apartment in Champex that was very reasonable, and temptation was too great.
This year was also different as Christmas day was a Saturday, so the rental period went Sunday to Sunday. That also meant we would trying to do the journey in one day - ambitious, but technically feasible. Chris and M-J together with Dom would come from Alsace, so we would use (and require) this as a fall back in case of delays.
We set off from home early (4am get up) on Sunday 26th to catch the 7am ferry. things went OK to Dover, except that the ferry was delayed leaving, setting the tone for the day.
We were fine through Reims, but then we picked up more and more traffic and had some big jams until we turned off for Pontarlier, but by now we were looking to be arriving after 6pm, and tight for the apartment hand over. Driving through Switzerland was better, but we still lost time.
Luckily mobile phone technology helped us and we got M-J to do the apartment hand over (including the cash deposit ... which I had forgotten to let them know about as we had it covered).It was dusk as we arrived at Orciere, and started up the road to Champex ... there was snow on the road, so at the first lay-by I pulled in and got out the chains .. after half an hour and very cold fingers I gave up trying to put them on ... at home they were tight, but in the cold and dark, impossible.
So pushing on I drove up the road trying to keep to the clear parts, all was OK (but hairy) until the last hairpin, where we had a four wheel drift which had all four of us in the van sucking hard.
We slid into a lucky parking slot at the garage at the entrance to the village, determining this was as far as we could go tonight. Calling Chris he came down in his car (all 300m) to help us unload .. we had not realised how close it was. We struggled to get all the kit up to the apartment, before collapsing in the ample sofas.
Relieved to have got there in one piece I slept the deep sleep of the just and woke up the next morning to sort out the mess.
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| view into Switzerland and Verbier from the apartment door |
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| | | Arrive Champex | |
| Champex | | | |
| | | Champex | |
| Vicheres | | | |
| | | La Fouly | |
| Marecotes | | | |
| | | Champex | |
| Go Home | | |