J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by bedrock barney

Apologies if I repeat some of what has already been said. We've owned an Audi A6 quattro estate the last 6 years and I've always been impressed with its handling on snow and ice. We swap it over to a winter tyre set each winter. The grip is very impressive and it feels secure due to the low centre of gravity compared to a tall 4x4. We took it over to Norway one Christmas for a 10 day ski holiday and whilst not as good as a car with studded tyres, it handled well enough on roads covered with snow with temperatures down to -25. We were able to drive along at 40 to 50 mph with the rest of the native traffic. We were also pleased to be in petrol car at those temperatures (we witnessed a couple of diesel cars that wouldn't start). See pic below of the car parked up outside our cabin in Hemsedal:



What's particularly interesting is the drop off in performance once the tyres have worn down a little. There is huge amounts of grip with a new tyre (choose carefully. We are currently on Vreidsteins but will swap to Continental or Michelin at the end of the season). However, once down to 4mm, most of the grip has gone and even at 6mm the performance is much worse. There are lots of s/h winter tyres on ebay shipped over from the continent with only 4mm tread. The reason they are on ebay is fairly obvious!

Val d'isere cams are snowy. Beginning to get officially excited now.......

It's listed as Breuil - Cervinia.

dobby wrote:Bedrock - where you off to next year? we'll probably be back to Norway - Trysil probably (nothing booked yet though)

val d'isere is booked for the christmas week for the 4 of us. Seriously looking forward to that. We've gone self catering this time. We will want to go on a 2nd week somewhere but we're stuck with either Feb half term or Easter as our youngest daughter is on her final GCSE year. Fancy trying Austria, maybe Lech or Ischgl. Could end up in the 3V though. We really enjoyed Norway but last time round found Hemsedal a little on the small side. We do like to 'travel' during a day's skiing. Enjoy Trysil!

After much deliberation I think we've decided (Mrs BB and myself) that we will not be able to join you all. Whilst one of our daughters has departed to Uni, the other is still at home and we don't think it's fair to leave her home alone. Therefore I am expecting a super expensive half term ski holiday instead! It's only money......

Looking forward to seeing the improvements in December. I promise to report back!

I'm very pleased to get 10mph average on my mountain bike. My route does take in some tarmac and I have been passed on occasion by a road bike seemingly going twice as fast as me!

On the topic of idiot drivers I do accept that most people are very considerate. It's the cretins that stick in the memory though. I was on a B road last week (proper single track with grass verges either side) and a 4wd pick up approached me a long clear section of road at about 50 mph. He didn't slow down at all and at the last moment swerved on the grass verge whilst flashing by me.

On the other side of the coin, I was driving back towards our village last summer on another B road. I saw a couple of guys riding their road bikes side by side and slowed down to their speed and sat behind them assuming that they would drop behind each other to let me past. No such luck. They rode on for another 200m before I was able to safely put my offside wheels onto a wider bit of verge. I paced myself with the bikes, wound down the nearside window and asked them (politely!) why they hadn't let me go by. One of the riders responded by saying it was a country road and I should have to wait. I told them that was ridiculous. I was then told to eff off. Nice!

The problem you will probably encounter is the fact that a lot of the hotel rooms will have been hoovered up by the tour operators for the peak weeks. We were struggling to find a hotel room outside of a package deal for our Val d'Isere trip. In the end we went for a self catering apartment option.