Homeward Bound

Bonjour,

It’s a very emotional blog for us this week as we received some bad news about Dad who has been in hospital for a month now and although his condition was not improving he was stable, however this week he has deteriorated and after serious discussions we have both decided that we should return home to be with him and our families at this very difficult time.   At the end of the day we have done everything we wanted and so much more and have had such an amazing and fantastic journey so although we will be returning home just a few weeks earlier than planned we feel we have achieved what we wanted and ticked all the boxes along the way and will be bringing back many memories to cherish.

Some snow has arrived and cold temperatures last week meant that they could also make some too and the resort finally opened a week later than scheduled last Saturday, although with only very limited lifts/runs opens.  

Here’s a few before & after pictures   

 

The altiport area & golf course

The Truite run we walked up the first day we arrived

To be fair they have worked really hard and done a fantastic job of getting some runs open with such limited snow and opening up the 3 Valleys links so at least you can get to Courchevel, Les Menuires & Val Thorens which again all have limited lifts/runs opens.  Saying that the snow quality has been absolutely fantastic at altitude and it’s been a real pleasure to get out every day without any crowds, Julie has been absolutely flying and is nearly catching me up!!!   

We had our last day out walking too and on route I found this little baby, I'd love to have a go but sadly the keys weren't in it!!  It's on my bucket list so one day I will get to have a go I am sure.

We walked back to camp through Meribel Village past this lovely little Chapel.

While out boarding we found a great spot for our lunch out on the mountain, it was so nice to just sit and chat and reflect on our year and what an amazing adventure we have had.  

The next day the visibility wasn’t that great and we had light snow and my beard ended up a bit frozen, it’s the proper thing now and Julie says I look like Dick Dastardly!!!

Dad must have been thinking of us too as it dumped it down with snow Wednesday afternoon/evening so yesterday we enjoyed our last day out on the mountain, it was snowing higher up but the temperatures are so unseasonably warm it was rain lower down, it will be busy here over Christmas & New Year so we hope that the snow will hold out for everyone although the forecast is still showing temperatures rising.

We have decided to travel home in two hits to break the journey up as driving 10 hours straight and almost 600 miles in a day will be a massive shock to the system so we will be doing an overnight stop at Troyes before catching the Eurotunnel home so no ferry ramps to worry about!!

We will be heading to Dave & Brenda’s, Julie’s mum & dad’s as our tenants Andy & Lesley are not due to leave our house until 17th January which is absolutely fine and we hope they have a great Christmas at “Homeside” to finish their year off too before moving into their new house.  It will be nice to spend some time with Dave & Brenda and tell them all about our trip and of course we will be boring them for weeks on end with stories and photos.  We are looking forward to a lovely Christmas dinner with all the trimmings…….and they have a dishwasher, whoop, whoop! but it goes without saying we will be spending as much time as possible with Dad and keeping ourselves busy.

If you have enjoyed reading our blog, don’t despair this isn’t the end as we will be keeping it running so keep your eyes out for our next update!!!

It's very hard for us right now so as we said we will be keeping ourselves busy when we get home so don't be surprised if you get a knock on the door as we will be catching up with friends and family.

So for now it’s goodbye, have a great Christmas & New Year, but just before we go here's a picture that we thought says it all.

J&J

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