Arriving in Bourg St Maurice

Leaving Holland, we took a couple of days to reach our first destination, Bourg St Maurice.

It was a fairly uneventful drive down through Belgium, Lux and into France (the flash of the speed camera aside), until we drove around a corner on a small snowy Swiss highway and came face to face with the snow capped Alps towering in the distance and a brooding Lake Leman (Geneva) at their feet. Wow! We were so overcome by the view we had to pull over and play around in the snow like overexcited teenagers for a good 15 mins or so.

Snow, snow everywhere!

First view of the Alps!

We couldn't help ourselves...

By the time we hit the road up the valley into Bourg we were getting pretty excited, although we didn’t really know what to expect. It sits at only 850m, but it stretches out along the valley floor beside what would be a raging Alp-fed river and numerous snowy peaks. It was all quite disorientating, and even more so given that it the mountains were obscured by cloud and that it spent the first couple of days and nights raining cats and dogs. Lucky that means snow higher up!

Chilling in Bourg on a well earnt day off

We decided to take our first day quite easy, getting back into it slowly without causing much damage to either ourselves or our equipment given the many weeks of action ahead. So we headed up to the small yet perfectly formed field of Sainte Foy. We’d never heard of it before but it came recommended in our guide book (thanks so much Graham & Becs!!), about a 20 minute drive from our campsite. And it was great too, weather was a little sketchy but the powder was great and fresh. Perfect for a first day, or half as it turned out. A real snip at 15 Euros with good fast lifts, albeit only 4, and a surprisingly large area. Very trying getting out of all that powder though! It comes highly recommended, apparently this is where all the guys who work at Val D’Isere come on their days off.

So the days have passed and we’ve racked up 10 nights in Bourg, become locals on the campsite, though not quite as local as some who are here for the entire season! Van living is great and the heater is just wow, programmed to come on at 6.30am, we wake up nice and toasty! Nice to have the opportunity to walk into town and go out for dinner, equally nice to hang in the van and enjoy our own après ski.

After days of wondering about this local Savoie delicacy called ‘tartiflette’, I finally got to try it. Potatoes, cheese, squares of bacony ham (affectionately known as lardons – go figure!), more stinky local cheese called Beaufort, and even more stinky local cheese called Rebouchon, all drowned in crème fraiche. No wonder Alpine food gets a reputation. I do have the recipe if any of you are interested though…