As you may have noticed that our 2025 New Year’s Resolution, “must try and do a regular blog” , isn’t going so well.
So what has been going on since the 26 January, we hear you all cry ….
Well, we flew back to Pock to visit family for a few days and celebrate a family birthday. Thankfully Nic could drive to the airport, and Rog was only in a sling and not a cast, as that would have made flying slightly more challenging.
We returned to France, via friends in the north west of England and they flew back with us to spend a few days. Once we landed at Geneva Airport, we went to the CERN visitor centre, the home of the Large Hadron Collider. Two of us found it interesting and spent a while in the exhibitions. The other two quickly went to the café.
Our friends do not ski, but took full advantage of the apres ski, (thanks for some of the photos). We had a lovely time showing them the local area. We booked an evening “Aperitif’ on the cable car, a round trip in the Vercland cable car with wine and nibbles. It was good fun (and we got 30% discount because Rog was one of the first 50 people to book our season ski passes back in September!).
We also went to Cirque Du Fer A Chavel, and up to both Sameons and Les Esserts ski areas for drinks. We also visited Sameons market, buying cured meats, olives and chocolate.
We enjoyed the relative quiet in resort before the French school holidays started, it was going to be busy for the next month. We noticed there were a lot of British voices in the village.
Rog had to keep his sling on until he was seen by the orthopaedic doctor at the hospital on 6 February, still unable to drive for a couple of weeks and told to do some physio. So we googled NHS Collarbone Physio, and Rog did those exercises.
Nic has skied on a few days, the weather has not been great. There is currently no snow in the village, they have been able to keep most of the ski runs open with manufactured snow, but the temperatures have not been kind with warm days, and not to many sub-zero nights.
We have walked regularly, usually around the lake and/or along the river, even without the snow it is a beautiful part of the world to spend time and recuperate from a broken collarbone.
Rog has read a lot of books, there are a couple of book boxes in the village, which get books in English, so we borrow them read them and return them. He has also done a lot of planning for our trips later in the year. So stay tuned for those!
At the end of February, we had some more family visited for a few days, who hadn’t skied for 30 years, and one of them had only ever skied once before, so we arranged a couple of private lessons. They did amazingly well, and we were able to ski a few blue runs together. Which was good, as Rog had been given the all clear to ski by the consultant, but told not to fall ! as the collarbone needs another few weeks to be fully repaired.
11 March – another activity included in our season ski pass was to sledge down the Marvel green ski run, we finally managed to arrange it as it only happens once a week. It was great fun, but it does say something that they only allow you to do to it on a sledge with brakes, and a helmet is compulsory (a helmet is not compulsory for skiing!) the snow was a little slushy so we got very wet.
Nic has discovered the local sauna and cold water dip in the lake, she is currently addicted to it and going weekly.
The recent weather continues to be not great for snow, it has been really warm for this time of year. There is still no snow at village level, but enough on most of the higher slopes.
Update 15/16 March it snowed at village level – it has mostly melted by mid afternoon, but that means there should have been a lot more up the slopes – we’ll go tomorrow to find out!
Photos:
Travurple 