J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by AllyG

Why don't you go the week before Christmas to somewhere snow sure like Tignes or Val Thorens, because it will be very cheap and quiet? That's what my daughter's doing with her Uni ski club. And they use 'off the piste' who specialize in uni trips.

https://www.offthepiste.com/

I've bought a £10 raffle ticket from them, but I had to pay 50p for postage and packing - so I suppose this means they will actually post me the raffle ticket?

I suppose I had better start researching Banff now, ready for my holiday :wink:

There's quite a lot of snow on the Grande Motte glacier today. There also seems to be 2 people sitting on the cables at the moment - I hope they're not going to be left dangling there all night - maybe I should phone the rescue services :shock: :lol:

http://www.tignes.net/en/skiing-in-tignes/webcams-290.html

This has gone 'live' today - I had an e-mail about it from Eurostar.

I tried pretending to book a ticket, out of interest, and if I wanted to go to Zermatt or Saas Fee on the 12th January I would buy a return ticket to Visp for £189 and the total journey time (including changing at Lille) would be 9 hours.

http://www.eurostar.com/UK/uk/leisure/destinations/swiss_alps.jsp

Thanks Brooksy and Dids :D

One of the things I particularly like about DIY ski holidays is that I can select various elements to suit myself and buy them when I want, in whichever order I find the most convenient.

I thought people might be interested to see in which order I booked these elements, and how much I paid for each of them.

1. First of all I booked a shared room in the chalet. The total price for this room is £399 plus £20 for the balcony plus £10 for the bath (there is also a shower).

2. Then, I bought a flight home with EasyJet from Geneva to Gatwick, departing late in the evening of Sunday 20th January for £48.

3. After that, I bought a ticket out to Bourg St Maurice on the direct Eurostar, as soon as the tickets came on sale at the beginning of August, departing from St Pancras at 10 a.m. on Saturday 12th January and arriving about 7 p.m. I paid £96 for this one way ticket in Standard Class.

4. I bought annual snowsports insurance from the SkiClub of GB for my daughter and myself for a cost of £100. This includes 14 days of snowsports insurance as well as annual cover for other holidays. It includes cover for off-piste but under 'search and rescue' it says 'reasonable costs' and there is a £250 excess for this.

5. Next, I bought a bus ticket from Tignes Les Brevieres to Geneva with Altibus.com leaving at 16-20 on Sunday 20th. This cost me 63 euros (around £50).

6. And now I have reserved myself a room in the hotel L'Angival in Bourg recommended by the chalet owners, Bonjour, for the night of Saturday 12th January, for which I will pay 52 euros. I had to do this over the phone (in French) because I had already tried booking it over the internet without response. It was the first time I'd tried doing this and it was pretty 'challenging'!

The remaining items that I still need to book are:
a) An 8 day lift pass for Tignes and Val d'Isere (Espace Killy) which will cost me 276 euros (about £221). I can either buy this on the internet directly from the Tignes tourist board, or through the chalet for the same price.

b) Carre Neige insurance which I will purchase with my lift pass. It will cost me about 2.80 euros per day and ensure that if necessary I will be rescued from off the mountain without having to pay the fees up front.

c) A bus ticket to get from Bourg to Tignes Les Brevieres on the morning of Sunday 13th January. It will cost me 10 euros and take about half an hour, and I don't think there is any particular need to hurry booking this bus as I don't suppose it will be full.

d) I still need to arrange transport for my skis. Ranchero1979 is very kindly giving me his old Dynastar Contact 4X4's but they are currently in Chamonix. And after the holiday I will have to decide if I want them stored in France or brought back to the U.K. I have found a company called Skis2u.co.uk who will collect skis from your own house in the U.K. and deliver them to the resort and then bring them back again at the end of the ski holiday for only £39-95.
And I suppose I will have to obtain some ski sticks and a ski bag as well.

Doing it my way I am going to end up paying £1000 for everything except food and drink on the slopes and in the airport etc. However, I will get an extra 2 days of ski-ing

If I was to do it the cheapest way I could I would only be paying a grand total of £820 if I hired skis or £779 if I had them delivered, for 6 days ski-ing, excluding the cost of travel insurance. And I would buy a return ticket with EasyJet from Luton to Geneva and use the chalet transfer bus.

randyrat wrote:
We're trying to get from Geneva to Tignes, and we've come up against Dick Turpin and all his fellow highway robbers. How can a shared transfer for five come in at £110 each? And that's the cheapest!
Looks like it's going to be the hire car again, which is still a killer at nearly four hundred quid. Unless we can find a cheaper alternative.....

It looks like Randyrat couldn't get a cheap quote for a hired car either. There's obviously a real art to this ...

Thanks for that Jon,
I must be doing something very wrong :cry:

I put in that I'd pick the car up at Geneva airport, Swiss side (I didn't know which side was cheapest but I had to put something), on 13th January and return it on 20th January and I wanted a family size car.

The cheapest car that came up was a VW Golf and it was £293 for the week :shock:

I think maybe I'd better stick to the train :lol:

And thanks Bandit for explaining what the road tax meant :D

Thanks Bandit :D

I tried out that Via Michelin site and it said it would cost a total of £39 each way, total £78, made up of:

Toll = £5-00
Petrol = £15
Road Tax = £20-00

It also said it would take 3 hours and 16 minutes (from Geneva airport to Tignes) and it was 108 miles, and the traffic effect was 19 minutes.

I have no idea what road tax means in this instance, or whether the petrol figures are correct.

So, I suppose if I take the mid-way point for Jon's car hire costs, £135, and add it to the above costs of £78 I get a grand total of £213 (without adding anything on for parking charges in Tignes).

And, if I assume that one could get a return bus ticket for £80 per person, then hiring a car is very marginally cheaper if there are 3 people in it but more realistically I think one would need 4 people to make it worth the trouble of hiring a car.