Oh Christmas Tree, oh Christmas Tree..

The Christmas trees all arrived in town!! Quite a large operation with the central tree being absolutely massive!! It took me several seasons to realise the tree isn't in the middle of the roundabout permanently!

As well as the jumbo tree, all the smaller ones have been scattered around and it's looking quite festive now with all the lights twinkling on them too.

All we need now is the arrival of staff, snow and guests! The first of which arrives tomorrow!

Different from last season????

Hmmm, Whats changed since last season then.... actually not too much. Good old Val is still the same as ever. The Moris Pub has had a lick of paint but other than that, all is well.

As it was a lovely sunny day, we went off exploring in the pick-up truck to see if we could spot any other changes. Some construction work is still going on and the road works men are out frantically doing some last minute repairs !! Sure they'll all vanish like magic tomorrow.

We went off up to Le Fornet on a beautiful new smooth road, then back down to the town centre and opted for the cross country route to the Chatelard and Manchet areas, a first for me to actually be able to drive across the nursery slopes rather than ski across!! Despite the sparseness of snow on the nursery slopes, the runs coming down to La Daille are totally covered in snow ready for the resorts opening. The snow cannons are pumping out snow and we do have some forecast for the weekend.

Back in Val d'Isere

Welcome to Val!!
Despite the slopes being due to open for the 'Premier Neige' on December 1st, the snow appears to have forgotten to arrive. Never mind, as it's still only November I'm sure it'll dump down before the 1st!
We arrived to a sun-drenched Val, also a very deserted Val, we saw one person we knew though who was extremely pleased to see us......
...Ladyboy!!! I'm sure Ladyboy must pine for us all through the summer months as she relies upon us for her extra food rations in the winter, she's forever sitting outside our office window expecting some tasty morsel to be passed out to her. We usually return to Val to find her a skinny little thing after having lost all the extra kilos she gained in winter, not this year though, she's still as tubby as ever! Maybe we'll cut down on the number of leftover sausages we give her.
Despite the excitement of seeing our beautiful furry friend, work was to be done in the way of unloading the pick-up truck. What a job. 24,000 tea bags plus 3/4 of a tonne of muesli and porridge oats later we were finally done and free to see what changes have happened in Val over the summer....

Farewell England, Hello Val d'Isere!!

Hurrah, the first posting for the 2007/2008 Finlays Ski season! I shall be updating our blog regularly with news about our company and whats going on here in resort. First though, pre-season news...

We set off from the UK on a very soggy and grey day in late November. After navigating our way out of London and down to Dover in our trusty pick-up truck we arrived at the ferry port with ten minutes to spare before sailing, lucky for us!

Upon setting sail, all attempts were taken to immortalize the white cliffs in a photo, however, the weather was so ghastly that the photo just shows mist and gloom, not worth posting here at all, hence why we have the pick-up instead, in the ferry!

Despite the weather the sailing was very smooth and spirits soared upon seeing blue skies over France. Farewell UK and grey, rainy weather!

Alas though, we bid the foul weather goodbye a bit too hastily and within an hour the rain started to pound down on us as we cruised along the French motorways. We ploughed on regardless and made it just south of Dijon where we spent the night in a small cute town called George St. Nuits.

Keen to get to Val and see all the snow we'd heard about, we set off the next morning at 7am. Not long after we passed the 'Mushroom Men', quirky little models which are just outside of Lyon and a prime landmark for knowing Val is just around the corner! (We'll, three hours away actually but it seems just around the corner when you've already driven so far!).

After a quick stop in Albertville for a very early lunch we finally arrived in Val!! Hurrahhh, Let the fun begin!!!