Le Franco Phoney

Sunday was a very windy day in La Clusaz. Outside my window, I could see the snow being picked up in mini-tornado fashion and taken away to somewhere else. So what do you do when it’s so windy? Well, if you’re the La Clusaz ticket office, you keep selling lift passes while closing most of the lifts. The day started with four out of the five peaks open, but by midday, only one was open. I chatted later that night with an angered friend: she had bought an afternoon pass, only to discover that the few lifts open in La Clusaz were drag lifts for beginners. She demanded a refund, but she said the ticket office told her that Croix Fry/Merdassier was still open so they could still sell the tickets. That’s right: no way of getting there without a car, but they can still sell the tickets without actually mentioning that fact. My angered friend should have looked at the piste report online like my other friends and I did. We jumped in my car to get to the only open area, inaccessible on skis from La Clusaz village, dodging branches that littered the road and driving over snow drifts that had built into mini snow dunes.

With a layer of snow in my car just from the time it took to put on my ski boots, we ventured into the storm. Unsurprisingly, few people were on the windy pistes, but we found some sheltered areas with plenty of trees to dampen the wind. Shouting on the chairlifts was the only option to be heard. One panicked guy and his family came over to a drag lift worker at the end of the day after realising the lifts to get back to La Clusaz were all closed. How would he get back? Luckily, an extremely flat piste could take them back, and the road it crosses (requiring skis and snowboards to be removed for a whole five metres) was probably covered with snow from the wind. A bonus: they’d save a few minutes in the half-hour or so it would take them to get back, presuming the dad helped the kids climb the uphill sections of the supposedly downhill piste. Fortunately, we had the car. Next time, I’m staying in.

The great thing about visiting a ski resort that one of your friends lives in is that you get to be a complete tourist without having to worry about people knowing you. Of course, this isn’t so good for the friend in the resort, but when the group consists of four girls — two of them single, you can get away with quite a lot. Our first night in Tignes started off innocently enough, patting Oscar the giant dog (just 3cm shorter than the world’s tallest dog) at the Alpaka before having a few drinks at my friend’s place. We headed back out and were told off for leaving the door open at La Grotte du Yeti before deciding it smelt too much like a toilet to stay, deciding instead to chat up the barman at the Jam Bar who put up with us until we thought we should try to get some sleep before catching first lifts in the morning.

After a full day of snowboarding the next day, you’d expect us to be somewhat subdued the following night. Two girls went back to the Jam Bar and continued to chat up the barman, and by the time the other two arrived a few hours later, the first two were beyond tipsy — one becoming very giggly while the other one spoke loudly over a pizza dinner about all sorts of odd, but entertaining, dinner topics, such as squat toilets. Before we had paid the bill, we were asked not to come back to the pizzeria, but that wasn’t even related to the drunken girls.

Add into the mix a boyfriend of one of the girls, who arrived in Tignes just in time to take us away from the pizzeria of our disgrace, and who was happy to ferry the girls around while doing handbrake turns in his van even though he only has one passenger seat, and you’ve got a party in a van right there. More like a fun-park ride than a drive to Val Claret, we eventually arrived with three girls splattered in the back of the van, giggling after their joyride. We stuck our necks into Daffy’s, but continued onto a bar that has an @ symbol in its name (which I’ve forgotten) while our bloke driver faffed around at his car for another few minutes.

It was in this particular bar that a French man came over to take our order. He didn’t work there: he just wanted to chat us up, and it worked. With our driver finally finding us seated in a corner, he explained to this guy at the bar that two of us were single and two were not, and that it was up to this guy to figure it out. He chatted up one of the non-single girls first before moving onto a single one. He told her he had not had a girlfriend for four months, yet he had told our bloke mate that his current girlfriend had cheated on him. Was this payback? Who knows. He didn’t get the opportunity despite some great efforts.

My Tignes friend wanted to check out another bar, le Couloir, so she and I ducked out for five minutes to find it and see what it was like. We didn’t make it through the door for two reasons:

1. some posh kid who had just arrived in the resort kept trying to talk to us; and,
2. a dog came and sat on my foot.

So, we eventually slipped away, with one very warm foot, and a posh kid imploring us to stay for a chat. Meanwhile, back in the bar, a guy attempted to drunkenly ballroom dance with one of the others, which proves that no matter where you go in the world, alcohol makes men believe they are Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing. They never are, but they’ll never learn.

We demanded that the DJ play some 80s music for us, then left, as you do when drunk, just a few minutes later. We did some more handbrake turns on the way back to Tignes le Lac before finally piling into my friend’s very small bedsit (around 20m² including spacious bathroom) in the early hours of the morning, ready to attack the mountain in daylight the following morning. Luckily, the subsequent snowstorm kept us in bed long enough the next morning to fully recover first.

Well, what a start to winter: La Balme here in La Clusaz opened last weekend, providing an entire area of untracked powder — and a few rocks underneath. With my snowboard relatively unscathed, I popped over to Tignes with some friends for Sunday and Monday. Despite the sunny weather on Sunday, the wind was strong, causing the fresh snow to feel like pellets of rice hitting us in the face at times. The glacier was mostly closed, again, like last time, due to high winds. The run down from the glacier was still rocky, presumably due to the high winds stealing all the snow.

Meanwhile, Monday was even worse. A friend in Val d’Isere texted me in the morning to say she was looking at a blizzard, while the rest of us chickened out of the 9.30 start we had planned. The fog and snow stayed, so we ventured out after a long breakfast and played on a free piste (thanks Tignes!) at Val Claret that was pretty much untracked until we arrived. That would be because there were only a few other suckers out there, but it was fun to try to see the kicker before actually hitting (or missing) it.

One of my friends chickened out of skiing, opting for ‘defrosting the car’ instead. This involved sitting in her car with the engine running and her feet over the heater vents on the console until she thawed out. By the time she was warm, the centimetres of snow on her windscreen had melted away. Meanwhile, just up the road from her, my handbrake-turn-loving friend had put on his snow chains and was happily pulling on his handbrake all around the ever-white roads of the resort.

So, two days of cold fingers on this visit, plus the day of boarding on the glacier in antarctic-style conditions in November, added to all my previous visits which mostly involved snow or high winds has led me to believe that Tignes actually means “bloody freezing” in French.

I woke up a few mornings ago to discover that the green grass was covered with a blanket of white, sparkling snow. Across the road from my place, a group of friends were having a snowball fight and one wandered further away to kick snow for the dogs to play with. See? Even the dogs love the snow, although Bruno, my cat, is less than happy about it.

Anyway, what really makes it officially winter is what happened on Saturday night. We ventured up to the carpark at La Balme, which is normally empty after dark in November. That all changes when there’s fresh snow in the vast open space. We made it up the slippery, snowy road that leads to the car park and discovered another car was already there. We saw its headlights go from side to side: its driver had the same thing in mind — handbrake turns! It’s been years since I’ve been in a car skidding sideways in the snow, and I was a little apprehensive, but it was great fun. We took it in turns with the other car to slide from one end of the car park to the other, fishtailing all the way, and ending with a 180-degree slide to go back again for more.

After three circuits, four more cars arrived. Now, the car park is big, but it’s not really big enough for six cars. No worries, the delivery van (!) driver took his van to the lower, smaller car park and went crazy there, leaving five of us all trying to hog the car park’s remaining untouched snow. After many more slides, we left the others to it: it was just too crowded, and I think we both felt a bit too old in such a young crowd. It was definitely one of those great relive-a-teenage-pastime moments, but better than that, I felt really local, with the others waving to us and smiles all around. It’s rare that the carpark is completely free of cars in winter, and even rarer for so much snow to fall to cause a spray of snow over the entire car when sliding sideways. This must earmark the start of winter.

Tomorrow, I will be snowboarding down one of the closed runs and catching freshies all day. Another sure sign that it’s winter! Bring on the snow.

What’s a road trip around a European country if it doesn’t involve a castle? Chateau de Beynac can now be added to the long list of castles I’ve visited. The castle overlooks the Dordogne river, and its prime position has made it a popular castle to attack. The British declared it as British territory at one point, and Richard the Lionheart was rumoured to have climbed through the toilet holes to take the castle by storm. Most recently, the castle, in ruins, was (from memory) bought in the Seventies by a French man for around €30,000 (again, from memory). He was told he was crazy for buying a ruined castle and that land it sat on was more valuable. He started restoring it without commercialising it with tourist traps like gift shops: all entry fees went — and still go — towards the restoration of the castle.

Although the French man passed away in July 2008, the castle, now in great shape, is still being restored. Guided tours given by volunteers are free and a great way to see the castle. All the usual topics are covered: life in a castle, toilets in a castle, how to heat and light a castle, a kitchen in a castle, and defense mechanisms of a castle. One thing that I had not seen before was a table in the kitchen with a long hole at one end for the men to put their swords (see photo below). This was the only place where they could relax without fear of attack, and one of the few times they removed their swords from their bodies during the day.

If you visit this castle, remember these important bits of information:

1. They do charge for public parking on Sundays, despite what French travel partners say.
2. If you don’t want to do the fifteen-minute heart-starting (or stopping) walk to the castle from the road below, you can drive to the car park right outside it the castle entrance.

We discovered both these things the hard way.

I’m doing a road trip from the South East of France to the South West, and I’ve noticed a few things. Only in rural France…

…do you see the rebelious elderly block off a car park by parking their car across the entrance so they can play patonque (a bit like lawn bowls but without the grass);

…can you speed through a village (30km/h zone) at almost double the limit and have the police wave a thanks to you when you slow down because they’re crossing at a zebra crossing;

…are you required to stop when travelling on some main roads to give way to traffic from a side street on your right because of an ancient French law;

…do you see every signpost framed and mounted on wood just because they’ve got so much of the stuff;

…do they set up automated lights for a ten-metre stretch of roadwork, which the locals ignore and drive through when the light is red because the lights take five minutes to change to roadwork-green (ie, orange);

…do you see a family of four park their car by the side of the road, fold out their picnic table/chair set and have a picnic next to their car when there is a perfectly good nature reserve right next to them (with a picnic table free for use).