Les Carroz April 2009 (Driving)

A snowHead

Now back from our first trip to Les Carroz so thought I’d write a report on our trip.

In recent seasons we have been to both Borovets and Tignes. Having had enough of Bulgaria, and not wanting to do the catered chalet thing again as we did in Tignes, we thought we would try to get a better value holiday by driving down and self catering (it was after all our third trip this season). We chose Les Carroz as we found a cheap apartment and the drive seemed easy with the resort very close to the A40.

We live in Wiltshire so decided on the Portsmouth – Le Havre route with LD Lines. Would have to say the ferry was excellent. We travelled out on the Norman Enterprise, and Returned on the Norman Spirit. Ships were really clean and comfortable. We decided as we boarded to get a cabin and found them to be spacious, very clean with comfortable beds, they had their own shower and toilet too, highly recommended, return trip with car, 3 passengers and cabins £240. Bargain I thought. Did consider Dover – Calais, but would not necessarily have saved me a great deal of time considering the extra mileage involved. Le Havre to Les Carroz Google Mapped at 480 miles.

We Travelled out Friday 03 April and stayed at a F1 Hotel at Le Creusot. I left it late to book so this was the closest one to the A6 on our route I could get, would have preferred to stay at Macon if I could have got in. I followed the road signs from Le Havre towards Paris, then the signs for Lyon which puts you on the A6. The route around the outskirts of Paris was a bit slow as we got there about 1800 and as not all of the section was autoroute we got caught in some commuter traffic which was slow moving. Once on the A6 though things moved well. F1 hotels are cheap and cheerful, quite comfy actually, and we had a simple breakfast there before we left. It took us seven hours to reach our overnight stop which included the traffic at Paris, a few stops and our “off piste” to the hotel. It was just over two hours from the hotel to Cluses, the main town below Les Carroz (I might have been zapped by a speed camera near Geneva too). Our return to Le Havre was quicker. We left the resort at 1500 Friday and we stayed at the F1 at Nemours which left us with a 3 hour drive to Le Havre the next day.

Do not buy anything from the motorway services, not even fuel if you can help it. Can of coke was €2.20, with 95 octane fuel at €1.27l. 98 octane was around €1.31l and diesel was around €1.04l. Bought on supermarket garages 95 octane is around €1.17 (sorry did not make a note of diesel here). Significant difference between on/off autoroute and UK prices. There was no difference between the Carrefour, Le Clerc or the conventional fuel stations whilst on the autoroute. I had actually planned my route looking for the supermarket services as I understood them to sell fuel at their supermarket rate but this was pointless. There are loads of service stations on the autoroutes, every 20 km or so with lots of rest areas in between. There is a Hyper Casino supermarket with garage at Nemours, just off of the peage, fuel here at €1.17, but no cashier after 2000. Our tolls were just over €50 each way. Did not even consider going across country to avoid tolls, would probably take many more hours of driving, autoroutes are fast and smooth and well sign posted.

Cluses is the main town below Les Carroz, usual facilities with a large Carrefour supermarket (with fuel). Did not find the cost of food particularly cheap in any French supermarket I thought the prices were very high compared to UK. This surprised me as this was not the resort, which I did expect to be expensive. We took quite a lot of food with us, even some frozen meat which lasted the journey easily wrapped in newspaper and put in a cool bag. The Spar in Les Carroz was very expensive, a croissant was €0.80 for example. We managed by doing a Cluses trip every couple of days for fresh items, only buying bread locally.

Les carroz is quite a large village I suppose, traditional style with no modern style buildings as such. We had private parking in our apartment block but rather than use the free ski bus found it more convenient to drive the mile or so to the free car park adjacent to the Telecabine. Lifts open at 0900 and queues very small even then, top of the hill and skiing by 0915 most days. Town has a couple of small supermarkets, Spar and Casino, and a very nice bakers/patisserie. A cheese and sausage shop with a few gift shops too, along with quite a few ski shops. There are bars and restaurants but we did not use any of them apart from Le Marlow in the centre for a drink on arrival.

We did not use any of the cafes or restaurants on the mountain at all. We took a picnic for lunch each day and apart from one day where we ate outside on the snow over looking Mont Blanc from Flaine (fabulous), we used the picnic room/terrace at the top of the Telecabine at Les Carroz, you can even leave your bag there if you like while you ski. We did look for other picnic areas shown on the piste map (Samoens and Flaine), but they were not obviously signed so couldn’t find them.

Mum, daughter and I skied together on blue runs each morning, with daughter and I skiing reds in the afternoon. We tried to ski to a different area each day and never got bored, nor saw it all. Pistes were maintained superbly. We usually finished skiing by about 1400 as the snow was getting a bit heavy by then. The weather was glorious all week, t-shirt weather (almost), with lots of sunburnt faces, excellent.

Note: We skied over to Flaine on the Monday, but the wife felt too tired to ski back over the hills to Les Carroz. We assumed that there would be a bus link from Flaine to Les Carroz but there is not one during the day. There is only one taxi driver in Flaine and he was off sick. Luckily the wife was able to get a “locals” bus which caters for local cross country skiers, and she only found out about this from a friendly ski bus driver in Flaine who radioed through to his depot. It took her three hours to get from Flaine to Les Carroz, we were quite worried about her and I was all set to contact the police when she turned up. I’m not sure how skiers would get back from Flaine if the weather closed in and the ski link was closed.

Our aim was to have a ski holiday for a reasonable price, during a school holiday period, if it worked out OK we would look at three trips again next season. We have all our own ski kit (apart from daughter’s boots) so rental costs are saved here. Planning meals and bringing our own food was a good idea, reducing local expenditure. Driving worked out cheap enough, but shocked at the cost of French fuel.

Total costs: Ferry £240, Fuel £200, Tolls £100, Accommodation £350, lift passes £500, local shopping £150, 2 x F1 hotel £90. Total £1630.

I would also like to publicly thank Marcellus and Katie (Snowheads), who supplied our lift passes and assisted with boot hire. We had not met before but he put himself out to meet us in town, took us to the rental shop and gave us our passes. Marcellus was very helpful in an earlier thread regarding our visit to Les Carroz where we made initial contact. I wish them every success with their venture and hope to meet them again next season.

A snowHead

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Basil glad you had a great holiday and enjoyed Les Carroz....

BTW we're kandmchalets not snowheads!!

Look forward to seeing you all in resort next year!!

You need to Login to know who's really who.

Basil, Marcellus and Katie put themselves out for us too and made sure the kids were well looked after. It showed the power of snowheads

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

chrisb, All praise for the power of Snowheads.

Help!!

Les Carroz April 2009 (Driving)

snowHeads Forum Index >>> Resort Reviews and Trip Reports