What A Welcome Back To France

Hi everyone and welcome to the first post direct from France this winter from your favourite Méribel blogging ski instructor. And what a welcome back to France I've had. Harriet and I left Leamington Spa last Friday morning, we jumped on Le Shuttle before driving for a few hours down through Northern France. We checked into our hotel in Troyes just after 8pm, then rushed out to a restaurant for a well deserved evening meal before a decent night's sleep.

The next morning came around quickly, and after checking out of the hotel we went for a short walk around Troyes. I had visited Troyes before, last spring in fact, click here for a link to a related blog post. But this was Harriet's first time there, and I was keen for her to see the (frozen) sights.

In short, Troyes is a lovely picturesque town in the Champagne region of France. There's an impressive collection of medieval buildings and narrow streets, and you really get the feeling that interesting French history has taken place here. Late November weather is often far from ideal when visiting anywhere, but Troyes still delivered in these freezing temperatures. And straight away Harriet understood why I was happy to return and introduce her to this lovely place.

As ever it was a real shame to not spend longer in this location, but several hundred miles of driving was ahead of us and had to be tackled and conquered that day.

It was very unusual for me to have company on the drive down to Méribel before the start of the ski season, and yet Harriet was with me this time. Why? As mentioned in recent posts, our apartment in Méribel has had some major renovation work done over the Autumn season. It's been turned inside out and upside down, and thankfully ended up in a brilliant condition. This also means that all of our belongings (furniture, clothes and all sorts) could now be returned back into their rightful place, easier said than done. These belongings had been stored deep down in the valley in Bride Les Bains, Chandon (a tiny hamlet in the Méribel Valley) and various places in our apartment building. A big job, and one that Harriet was keen to help out with.

It was great having Harriet here to help out, but of course one thing we couldn't control was the weather whilst we were going through this process. Having lovely sunny weather would've been ideal, and added to the enjoyment of being back in Méribel. That didn't quite happen. In fact a good couple of rather chunky storms passed through Méribel whilst we were beavering along with our chores. If truth be told, the weather was a pain, especially the 24 hours of demoralising rain in resort. But we knew deep down that this dodgy weather in resort was extremely good news up the mountain......

The amount of precipitation was impressive, with the snow/rain limit bouncing around a bit. The top half of the mountain was always being heavily snowed on, ideal for the start of the winter. And then the temperatures dropped nicely; back to below zero degrees meant snow falling and settling at resort level. Blimmin brilliant before the start of the ski season. The next couple of photos might seem a little odd, with me measuring the snow depth with a tape measure.

In my defence, we had been down in the valley at a furniture shop called Meubles Pin the day before, and I still had a tape measure in my puffa pocket!

Right, enough of this early winter mountain lifestyle nonsense. What are the snow conditions like I hear you ask? Well, I haven't got a clue yet until I go skiing. However, I reckon there's a huge amount of fresh snow that's fallen this last week at high altitude. I really believe this is a very good start to the winter. There is plenty of evidence down at Chaudanne that the snow cannons have been running. In fact I've noticed that the Chaudanne webcam has been switched back on, here's a link to it for you to have a look.

I dropped Harriet off at Geneva airport yesterday for her to return to the UK, she then comes back to Méribel for Christmas. In the next few days pre-season chores will continue, including picking up a truck full of new ski instructor uniform kit. Plus, and most importantly for me, I plan to strap on a pair of skis a few times and go for a ski. Méribel doesn't open its ski lifts until Saturday 6th Decemeber. However I have other options. What a welcome back to France! Do keep in touch with my Socials, where I post more frequent updates than this blog page. Right, time to dust off my ski boots, skis and go for a slide very very soon..... Live With Passion. Martin.