 Poster: A snowHead
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It’s taken me ages to get round to writing this trip report, but I thought it would be worthwhile doing, as when we were first researching about going to the Southern Alps, there wasn’t a great deal of information available on here about the resort of La Foux d’Allos, or the Espace Lumiere area in general – so here goes with my rambling thoughts! 
Firstly the background – this was only our second trip as a family to the Alps – the first being to Morzine a couple of years ago, this makes me uniquely unqualified to offer a reliable opinion on this resort, but that won’t stop me! With two school /pre-school aged children, and the new rules regarding taking children out of school in term time coming in this year, we are now limited to around 5 potential weeks where we can go skiing, so we were keen to find a really cheap deal that would allow us to go skiing, without completely breaking the bank.
Thanks to some great advice from the members of this fine forum, we were pointed towards an online travel agent called Snowtrax – apologies if this name is well known to everyone, but we’d never heard of them before. After checking out all the options we decided to go to France, due to proximity, and the best deals were in the Southern Alps. We eventually plumped for a resort in the Espace Lumiere called La Foux d’Allos. We were very impressed by the price we got from Snowtrax – if I recall correctly we managed to find a week’s accommodation, ski passes for 4, and ski rental for 3 for less than £1000 (in the February half term holiday), which we were frankly amazed by. Snowtrax themselves were well organised, I gather it is a German company with a UK facing website, but there was no language barrier and all communication was punctual and correct. They offer a snow guarantee too, which put my mind at ease.
La Foux d’Allos is a small resort located around 20km from the Italian border, 100km north west of Nice, in the Parc National du Mercantour and is the Source of the Verdon river, the region is Haute Provence. We were going self catering and as we were late in booking, we decided to self-drive rather than fly (plus my company car means I don’t have to pay for fuel!). It was an extremely looooooooooooong way! We caught the 5pm ferry from Dover, just as the force 10 gale eased off thankfully! We stopped off in an F1 hotel in Dijon on the way down, arriving at around 1am, then got back on the road for the second half of the journey, which lasted another 8 hours!! After many many stops for loo breaks etc, we eventually arrived in resort at around 3pm, and found lots and lots of snow. I was grateful for the winter tyres but didn’t need to snow chains in the end. We found our way round the village to our hotel, a large block of self catering apartments called Residence Plein Sud. I must admit we were expecting the worst, given the price, but actually it was fine – there were few facilities, but the rooms were clean and tidy, warm, everything worked and the view was fantastic! There was a little café/bar on site, wifi was available and a huge ski locker was handy. The apartment was a little on the small side, but we were perfectly happy.
The ski hire shop was on site as well and we got some good quality equipment from them (SkiSet). A 5 minute walk into the village centre and we found the office of the ESI ski school, and arranged the rendezvous times for my son’s lessons the following day. The lessons were in small groups of c.4-6 children all aged around 4 to 7, with the same instructor all week. My son, 6, had never been on snow before and had had a few pretty uninspiring lessons at the local dry ski slope when he was 4, so we were not too sure what he would make of it. He had been really excited about the idea in the run up, especially getting all the gear, but I wouldn’t have blamed him for not engaging with the lessons, as they were mainly in French, it was quite cold, and he has a limited attention span. We arrived at the end of the first lesson expecting the worst, but all we saw was a huge smile as he zoomed down the green run behind the instructor having a whale of a time. Throughout the week he improved dramatically and I was quite happy to take him down the blue runs that I normally use. It was such a privilege to see him ‘clicking’ with a new activity straight away, and enjoying it so much.
The village of la Foux is a pretty nice, but small, French mountain village, there are no large supermarkets, a couple of dozen smaller shops and eateries and lots of hotels/ self catering accommodation. It was really charming in the snow but I wouldn’t fancy living there in the summer. I think the best thing about it was the fact it was really French, it seems to be the type of place where French families go on their holidays, that’s a good sign to me – there was no more than 3 or 4 other British registered cars in the week, and my basic level of high school French was sufficient to get around with no issues. The Ski area in La Foux links with le Seignus and together comprises 43 ski lifts and 79 runs (11 green, 33 blue, 30 red and 5 black) As a family of novices this was great news for us. The village is at about 1800m and the highest run is about 2500m – the view from the highest lift was absolutely incredible – on a clear day you can see Corsica apparently. There were a couple of brasserie/cafes on the mountain and the prices were surprisingly reasonable (about €10-€15 for a main course, and portions were huge!!) Everything you would need could be found in the village and the local baker brought their produce to the apartment every morning – thank god they don’t do that at home, or I’d be 25 stone by next winter.
Our accommodation was fine until the second full day, when there was a power cut in the evening. The power was off for a while and when it came back on there was no water, which was a little strange. We thought little of it and went to bed. We were woken in the night by blue flashing lights outside our balcony and went out to find the Pompiers were in attendance. It turns out that there had been a massive flood in the residence, and the basement was completely flooded. It took 12 hours to get the water back on, and the ground floor was a bit of a disaster zone and the lifts were unserviceable, and the only stair case was in complete darkness. This continued for the third day, but to be honest we weren’t all that bothered, we were out skiing all day, and our apartment was warm and dry, had power and hot water so the only impact on us was the dodgy stair well, but we had brought a torch anyway so it wasn’t the end of the world and we would have been quite happy to stay. After about 24 hours though, the management of the residence decided it was better that we go elsewhere and they gave us a choice of two other properties in the village. There was a lovely French guest at the front desk who helped us understand what was going on and arranged us to stay at a lovely 4* apart-hotel with swimming pool/sauna etc. The accommodation was much nicer than the original place, with an extra bedroom too, and had a lovely gentle green run past the apartment, so we were in our element. It was a bit of a pain moving half way through the week, but the second place was so nice it was worthwhile.
Meanwhile, my son was progressing at a great speed and I decided to have my first ever ‘proper’ ski lesson, which was something of a revelation, and broadened my horizons and opened up many new runs that I would have not considered before, I will most definitely be having more lessons on our next trip.
The week seemed to fly by, and we spent the last day skiing and eating before going back to pack up the apartment. We left the resort at 8am and arrived back at Calais at 9pm and were lucky enough to get an earlier ferry. It was a long old drive, but only about 4 hours longer than the last time we went to Morzine and over the course of a week it made little difference to the holiday.
All in all we had a great holiday, enjoyed wonderful skiing conditions, and would gladly head back to the same resort again next year. I can happily recommend la Foux d’Allos as a resort, particularly for beginners and improvers. Looking forward to Christmas already.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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M535man, thanks for the report on one of those smaller French resorts that doesn't often get a mention. And indeed well done for taking a chance on it. Seems like you were well rewarded.
After doing a search I also found this good TR from 2010 http://snowheads.com/ski-forum/viewtopic.php?t=63621&highlight=foux
The sound of the off piste makes it one for me to consider for a family trip. The only thing that puts me of is the extra couple of hours driving compared to our usual haunts.
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Hi
Great report. I'll confess to a vested interest in that I have an apartment there. Your pass also entitles you to ski across to Pray Loup which is the same size as la foux again.
Resort is definitely v family friendly and reasonably priced.
Glad you enjoyed it
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FAQ
Very useful indeed, given the paucity of information on smaller French resorts (as opposed to the large number of grumbles about the price of beers and the wretched "spag bol" in the handful of "
).
