Skiing on a shoestring

Breathtaking: View from my window in the resort at Les Carroz
10 April 2012

As a first-time skier my top priority was to pick a resort where I could find my feet without breaking the bank.

I was determined to tailor my trip to the demands of the credit crunch and keep the cost as low as possible.

The bill was already going to be bloated by the need for lessons so keeping the cost under £1,000 each for the two of us was going to be tricky.

And with the weak pound taking a battering from the Euro the task of keeping the budget down was going to be trickier still.

I searched for a slightly lesser known resort where, I hoped, I would be able to at least get some budget accommodation.

Then a friend recommended Les Carroz as a place which, he said, had everything its better known neighbours had but at a more reasonable price.

Les Carroz is a French village in the Haute-Savoie, close to Mont Blanc and just three quarters of an hour by car from Geneva airport.

The resort offers access to one of the most beautiful Alpine ski areas, the Grand Massif, with 265 kilometres of slopes, though a few yards was to prove challenge enough initially.

The area is more popular with Swiss and French skiers than Brits but there was the odd British family dotted around the village.

Les Carroz, meaning crossroads, has a range of accommodation from luxurious upmarket chalets, which were well beyond our price range, to some pretty basic apartments.

Our basic self-catering apartment, which was 83 a night, had one bedroom but also a sofa bed in the front room that could easily have slept another two.

And once we had settled in, hired our gear and bought ski passes for the week we headed for the nearest ski school.

Our instructor Bernard's face dropped when I told him that Sophie and I had never even put on a pair skis before and he realised he would be spending the next few days on the boring baby slopes.


Snow trouble: Jack and Sophie take to the slopes

And there was gradual progress over the next few days. Sophie found her feet first, but after that I advanced more quickly.

This I put down to my willingness to fall over frequently and hurt myself in a bid to improve, while she was having none of that.

"Women," Bernard explained to me, "want always to control everything."

I relayed that little gem to Sophie over dinner. "Ah," she replied, "well Bernard told me that people who are fearless have no imagination."

It seemed Bernard had been telling us both exactly what we wanted to hear.

The first few days had been frustrating and simply staying upright was a challenge.

But he was an excellent teacher and had both of us on the blue slopes by the end of the week, which had seemed a distant dream on the first day.

The cost of eating and drinking out was crippling. When a beer sets you back you the equivalent of more than £5 you know you are in trouble.

But if you are happy to shop in supermarkets and cook in the apartment some of the time then you can save yourself a lot of money.


Steady hand: Sophie and ski instructor Bernard

There a local performer, Dario, played the traditional role of 'le Colporteur' - travelling book sellers who in days gone by would take news from one mountaintop village to the next.

He singled out the only English couple in the restaurant for some special attention, but it was all good natured... I think.

Dario insisted Sophie would have to kiss him if she could not repeat the lyrics to an age old song. Thankfully, she eventually got it right.

We had managed to make it through the week without any broken bones. But had we managed to avoid bankrupting ourself in the process?

Well a bit of totting up showed that we had got through the week comfortably inside our £1,000 per head budget, food and drink not included of course.

Cost breakdown

Return ticket to Geneva with Swiss International Airlines: 97
Airport transfers by coach and taxi: 100
Self catering apartment for six nights: 250
Ski hire: 150
Ski passes: 30 per day - 180
Ski lessons: 35 per day - 210
Total cost per person: 987 (£884)

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