Self drive from Yorkshire

A snowHead

We are hoping to do a self drive ski holiday next Feb half term and Easter. 2 adults and 1 baby travelling from Yorkshire.
We think it would be best to travel on the ferry from Hull to either Rotterdam/Zeebrugger (to avoid driving overnight) but we are not sure which are the best ski resorts to drive to that would have good snow and self catering baby friendly accomodation (ideally with 2 bedrooms) available with a creche nearby. Has anyone got any experience of doing this??

Any advice on resorts and accomodation would be beneficial.

Thank you

A snowHead

We went to Val Thorens last Easter.

Drove out and stayed in the Temples D'soleil apartments.

Had an apartment for 6. It had one double bedroom. One room with bunks. One lounge/diner/kitchen. The standard was way higher than I'd expected.
The ESF Creche was just a five minute walk away and they were fantastic. We just put the baby in for 3 hours in the moeninf but they will keep them there all day and follow individual feeding plans etc.

I know there are closer resorts to drive to but we found this trip excellent.

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Go by plane - you'll be more comfortable:

http://youtube.com/v/6VLYpKGVBUg

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

I've looked at this option and apart from being able to take lots of clobber the economics didn't really add up. Ferry was c£450 including food, tolls c£120, diesel c£300 - so almost £900. I was looking at it with 2 kids and me, who i got to PdS from Leeds for about £850 at half term with three bags (60kg). The thought of a 24hr journey at the end of the week made it unattractive to say the least. As it was we left Morzine at 0800 French time, home for 1330 UK.

Am I missing something or is the only benefit luggage? Puzzled

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andy from embsay, no, you've got it right.

For the last two years we've been away at Feb half term and each time three cars have driven with four people in them. It took much longer and was more expensive for them to drive than it was for my family of four to fly.

On the plus side, they did take everyone elses skis to save us the fees Cool

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You evil genius, you... Toofy Grin

After all it is free

ntweedle, welcome to snowheads.

You should have no problem finding a two bedroom apartment in almost any resort. What other factors are important to you? ie, what kind of skiing do you like, what kind of resort?

Driving at half term is very busy and unless you are careful with the timing of your journey you could spend a good many hours in traffic jams.

On the whole, I agree with the posts above suggesting that flying (and hiring a car to drive to resort, or getting a taxi transfer) is easier, though there again the traffic is an issue.

If you can find accommodation which has Sunday transfers life would be a lot easier.

You could do alot worse than Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis in Austria. I don't work for the Tourist Office Wink

but I've recently become a big fan - there's a dedicated thread on here with views etc.

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Samoens has lots of self-catering accomodation like what you are looking for (try Peak Retreats), and there is a resort creche in the center of town which we used a number of times when the kids were small. You do need a car though as the creche ("garderie") is not near the lift station, but in the town centre.

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How are you planning to organise your day, between skiing, child-care, nursery etc? That might indicate what kind of accommodation set up you need. If you're going to do a certain amount of swapping around, I'd say you need accommodation which is within a few minutes walk of both the creche and access to the skiing.

Pretty well EVERY resort is going to have nice 2 bed apartments - that's the least of your worries.

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Thanks for the advice everyone. We will be driving and taking the ferry so just need to decide on which resort to head to. Hoping our baby can go into childcare for the whole day as he will be used to nursery by this time next year anyway! We both snowboard so prefer resorts without too many drag lifts, easy childcare access and close to the slopes!

altis, as soon as I saw the thread title I knew someone would post that clip!

I 'ad a reet good chuckle to me sen when I saw it 'ad 'appened, 'appen!

You know it makes sense.

I have to drive every year (I'm a lecturer) and where I teach we curiously get the half terms as reading weeks.

I drive from God's Country (Lancashire) via Dover/Dunkirk, overnight near Aachen, and near Gent on the way back

My trip to Austria (Serfaus - and like Tyrol, I'm now a big fan) was significantly cheaper by driving - and has been for the last three years to Hinterglemm, Kitz and Kirchberg.

Ferry £74
Hotels (1 each way Ibis) £75
Fuel £260 (A4 Diesel)
Tolls £10 (Via Belgium/Germany/Austria)
Recovery is included in the car's warranty at present

All in at about £220 per person (there's two of us) with unlimited baggage/space.
Flights to Innsbruck were £900 for the pair of us - the differential paid for the ski-passes.

The French alps are significantly more expensive to reach, with about 120-140 euros return for the toll on the Autoroute.

And I don't mind the drive - I like travelling Embarassed

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

oofaafuu, half terms? Reading weeks? Must be humanities? Social sciences? Good tips re Austria compared to France. Always thought about driving but never quite justified it price-wise compared with flying from cheap UK airport (erm, that'll be Gatwick then), even though I live in Wales.

A snowHead

oofaafuu, you say yourself you live in the Grim North. God's Country is a little East of you. snowHead

A snowHead

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

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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

I did Hull-Rotterdam when driving out this season to St Anton. Drove off the ferry at 9am, pulled up at my accom by the Nassereinbahn at 7pm with several toilet/fuel/food stops. Ferry times a little better than the Zeebrugge route IMHO as it sails a little later, drive on the ferry, get some grub whilst you wait to depart and then curl up in the cabin for the night.

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if, and only if, the snow is aplenty you might want to have a quick look to the Vosges (Hohneck, Gerardmer...) massif which would be definitely the nearest, continent side, for you. There is a bit of everything there. From (very) easy to fully flung hors piste/alpi/rando. Contact a local via the many blogs on the web.

Otherwise, to save you an hour or so drive, you might want to stay in resorts around Geneva (either Swiss or French - district 74). Maybe Chamonix via the Lausanne, Martigny, Vallorcine way or Avoriaz.

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Did the Hull Rotterdam to Austria this year after a decade of flying. I was a lot better than I thought, the ferry just seems a lot less stressful than the airport and you get a good nights sleep raring to go the next morning- mad it to Austria in around 10 hrs so just in time for evening meal in resort. I would agree on the way back you should perhaps plan for an overnight stop somewhere within a few hours of the ferry, we stopped in cologne which was great and just about 3 hours the next day to the ferry. The return ferry seems still part of the holiday and not just a means to an end. The best bit is you can cram plenty of gear in the car without the worry of excess baggage.

After all it is free

Seems obvious but are you time rich or time poor? Young family: I'm guessing the latter.

It's only after you've done the trip by both car and plane that you really appreciate the huge difference in travel time. Get the flight timings right, you can be home by 3pm on Saturday having left your ski accommodation at 9am that morning. Contrast that with getting home at maybe 11 am on Monday having left your ski accommodation at 3 pm on Saturday.

Up to a point we're comparing apples and pears but if you've only got a week's holiday then travel time has to figure.

andy from embsay, Mosha Marc, much different sums for me from Leeds. These figures from 2010

1. Use eurotunnel with Tesco vouchers, cost - zero
2. Tolls, avoid France, ski in Austria, tolls = 30 Euro for the Austrian pass
overnight stop £52.35
overnight meal £50.00
petrol £150.00
insurance £26.25
breakdown £37.80

It's cheaper this year as I got Euro wide insurance included and newish car has euro breakdown cover.

I couldn't get flights for 4 with 4 pairs of skis for anything like that cost....

The way home we leave at 5am, back home in Leeds by 8-9pm same day. Longer than flying, true, but alot less stressful and can take loads more stuff with us.

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kitenski, it costs me about £150 in petrol to drive to scotland and back!!

Do you drive above 30mph at all wink

You know it makes sense.

Mosha Marc, this was 2 years ago in a car that did 45mpg, but figures maybe inaccurate, call it 200 Smile

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

A snowHead

The point I was indicating was it also cost another £4/500 to fit W Tyres just for the one trip. Thats the thing that puts me off driving to Austria in the Winter.
In the summer I usually spend circ £200 on ferry/fuel for the return trip from Dorset to Kitzbuhel. That is going via Luxemburg to get the cheapest fuel.

A snowHead

kitenski,

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

We used to do Eurostar but the 4 hours getting there from North Yorkshire is a real pain, especially on return leg - A1M/ M25 etc so we've increasingly started doing Hull/ Rotterdam and whilst its more expensive we really do find it good overall value. We get a 2 night crossing so save on hotels on route and a twin cabin each way costs about £300 for 2 people. My only criticism is that it dumps you out at 8am on both sides, and is a slow crossing - I'd much rather the ferry moved faster and we were on the raod for say 6am but thats unavoidable. We're in Arlberg for 5pm latest so its fine.

If we're going for a few days we still fly from Manchester, cheap Jet2 days from Leeds/ Bradford have long gone if travelling with skis. Lufthansa or Swiss to Munich or Zurich and travel by trains (brilliant). Also FOC ski carriage with both carriers. We sometimes do EJ Liverpool/ Manchester to MUC/ ZHR but usually timings are a compromise with them. Lufthansa and Swiss generally cheaper anyways.

Much prefer the car, yes its more expensive and takes slightly longer but seems less stressful and we can get all the toys in, music's good, and we share the driving so all's good. Bought a set of quality winter tyres imported from Germany and spare alloy wheels (cheap off eBay) so bang them on the company car and fill up to the roof with diesel at Hull both way so it works for us! wink

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I keep asking why we dont change to Winter tyres in the uK. At 7 degrees and below we are better off with hem. The only reason I keep coming back to is that we seem to change our cars more often and people probably wouldnt want to take on the second set of tyres intially. They might do if it happened for a few years. In other words if it was part of the culture of buying a second hand car.

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I couldn't make the sums work traveloing from Yorkshire going via Hull - Eurotunnel might be cheaper, but even so I can't see how you could drive that way and back for £150 (not in my car anyway) - the absolute best mpg I'd get would be 40, so home to the Alps would be in the region of 60 gallons - which is near as dammit £250.

I wouldn't fancy driving all that way with a 10 and 12 year old either - flying from Leeds has us leaving the chalet at 8am and getting home for lunch. We used to do the Lakes to Cham in a car but we had 4 drivers - nowadays it's just me as my wife doesn't do skiing.

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jafa, Easiest answer is to just run winter tyres all year round: then there is not much extra expense at all.

After all it is free

As others do here, I leave for winter tyres on all year.

As for the cost, well look around for the videos showing stopping ability on wet roads compared to summer tyres, then ask yourself who much your/partners/kids lives are worth

jafa, UK should have winter tyres as mandatory just like in Germany/ Netherlands/ Austria etc, or alternatively your insurance would be null and void, however the government would never implement the change because it's not a vote winner and its too short-term thinking in policy - and they are not serious about road safety.

There'd be uproar from objection groups complaining that loads of people wouldn't able to afford it..... IMO if you can't afford a safe car you shouldn't be on the road in winter. I and my OH have winter tyres because we choose to be safe not because it's the law, however as soon as it snows the roads are full of abandoned and dented cars and commercial vehicles, all floundering about. Unfortunately also including my wife's 2 years ago when hit by a side ways spinning Tesco delivery van......no winter tyres and sheet ice, needless to say it ended up on its side in a ditch and hit ours on its travels, despite our 4 winter tyres a low-flying Tesco I'll-equipped truck from the largest supermarket company in the UK hit ours!

Insurance companies could and should drive the change, and reduce premiums for those who take a responsible attitude. Winter tyres are no more expensive than all year round ones, I recently imported mine from Germany and they were 50% cheaper, it's just supply and demand and there's a cartel in UK at the moment. People ought to have 2 sets of wheels/ tyres just like on the continent, how much does lost time in bad weather cost this country per day year in bad weather as well as hiked up insurance costs to cover repairs?

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