Return from Aussois, France

Time to go home ...  Outside it has been very cold for days.

We shovelled the snow away from the drive way, and Alan, Chris and I cleared our cars/ van of the loose snow picked up (blown in) over night. I left the van running to warm it up, an loaded the kit in.

Then the van spluttered and stopped ...  It refused to start again .. Leaving it for a while, as we completed packing up and emptying the apartment.

Trying again . .. nothing ..  there was no fuel getting through and it finally dawned on me that the fuel had waxed up in the cold... we tried using a hair dryer on the fuel lines, but no improvement.

Finally I resorted to calling the AA 5* service I had religiously signed up to each year, the last time I had used it was for the windscreen wipers a few years ago. They gave me an estimated time in 2 hours ... we sat and waited ... nothing..  and then more nothing. Alan , and Linda had left, but Chris and M-J hung around to see what they could do to help.

So to try and resolve it ourselves, I popped down to the local garage where there was a person doing things in the back. He came around to have a look, and added an additive, told us to wait and see ... it started, ran for five minutes then stopped again. We tld Chris and M-J to leave us to sort it out, and get off.

We dragged him around again, and he got it going then drove it down to the garage, where he blew out the fuel filter and the tank lines, before reconnecting it ...  I suspect that at this time he damaged the connectors to the fuel filter, which had a complex manner of connections and a feedback circuit to warm the fuel incomer. After much messing around, he gave in and fitted a tractor fuel filter ... this had to be primed by cranking the engine hard each time it stopped, but it worked.

We drove home gingerly, expecting the bodge to break at any-time. But it survived and we got back with few issues, other than having to negotiate a later ferry.

We never did get the AA 5* rescue ..  if the garage owner had not been around we would have been stranded for a long time.

Aussois, France

Not sure if we went out today or else the weather got the best of us.

However the girls certainly went sledging.

Aussois, France

 The weather still had not improved much, there was a fierce wind blowing. Chris, Alan and I were the only ones silly enough to want to go out on the hill.

We headed up into the cloud .. the hope was to come out above it ...  we did - just - but only at the top of the drag lift.



After a couple of fast runs on the reds, we decided to have a look over into the back bowls .. the lift was closed, but I believed we could escape around the bottom and back to the main piste areas.

We dropped down into the bowls and were really disappointed that all the snow that had fallen over the last few days had been blown away.

What we thought might be some good skiing was not, and we had a long pole to get out the bottom ...  not very satisfactory.

After all this effort we raced from the top to the bottom and retreated to the warmth of the apartment.

Monolithe Walk, France

Last night it snowed, and snowed, there was over 1 metre dropped by the morning ... but there was a fierce wind and low cloud, while it continued to drop light flurries.

By midday I had cabin fever and needed to get out ... so donning only my town gear I set off for a walk .. I would regret this later.

I walked up to the town and along the road towards Sardieres. As the road crested the other side of the valley there was a car park for the ski de fond, and although empty there was a lot of snowshoe tracks going up the hill...  towards the monolithe.

I headed up the track, at the bend in the track where it went over a river, the tracks went up, as I could not see the track any more I followed the footprints.   At the shack marked as Jomier, I had struggled enough and decided to drop back down, following the track.

the snow was light and fluffy and I wished I had brought my skis.

At the road I went back via the lower road through the new buildings and back to the apartment ..  Lots of exercise, and fresh air ... the clouds were still down, but I felt like I had done something.

Aussois, France

Chris and M-J arrived last night and we would have all gone out to the slopes to-day .. I am not sure what we did ... but with the Girls and Dom it was probably the Blues.

We finished early, as all the girls wanted to go back sledging.

Alan went along with his camera and after a while we were all taking turns and the ramp got bigger and bigger.

Aussois, France

This day slipped my memory, we will have gone onto the slopes.

I believe we would have gone to the top .. using the long drag lift ... then come down the red runs.

At the end of the day, the girls went off to find the sledging slope on the other side of the pasture below the Fort Marie Christine.

Aussois, France

Christmas day, luckily we had picked up some chicken yesterday, and vegetables, so after a slow start to organise all the stuff we headed off for a short day on
the piste.

I cant remember what we did, but I suspect we kept to the blue runs as we had Sue and the girls.

Sue was trying out her new skis and boots ....  the skis were in a sale on the last day at Val Frejus, and the boots were an early Christmas present. She appeared to get on well with them, but we did not press them hard.

2005 Ski Trip, France

Bryon and Sue had again chosen not to go away, so we had planned to be with Chris and M-J again, but this time also Alan and Linda. We would spend Christmas day with Alan and Linda, and then Chris and M-J would come down from M-J's parents on Boxing day, for the rest of the week.

This year we were off to Aussois ... we had booked a large apartment ... It was a leap into the unknown as it was a new area we had only visited for the occasional day. It was also a newly refurbished apartment, where the owners were working on the one underneath. Spent the night at Dijon on the way down.

The apartment was a fantastic place, which would be hard to afford normally, but was cheap as it was new and there was work going on downstairs.

Trip Time Line

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