J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by KevinC

Broom - glad you had a good time. Which runs did you most enjoy?

karen72 wrote:are you going to do a trip report then? i quite fancy la plagne for next year

I'd highly recommend La Plagne as long as you don't want wild nightlife, although there are some lively bars dotted about. We stay in Belle Plagne for several reasons - restaurants, ski in-ski out, traffic free and more attractive than the rest of the La Plagne villages. Pierre et Vacancces have several reasonably priced self catering apartments - and they often do promotions around October time.

The indoor ski-slope better get built in Sunderland. We're moving nearer there partly so we can easily use the sports facilities round the olympic pool including easy skiing!

Anyway, when I was thinking of buying a snowboard this is was the recommendation of one of my friends who has 6 or 7 sets of skis/snowbaords. As mentioned on the website you can try out the gear whilst skiing. Not sure if this would be better for trying them than wearing them in the house for several hours..... It refers to skis so if you were interested I would double check with them that you can also try the boots before you went, but I was told that you can.

Here's the link anyway!

www.xscape.co.uk/snow/castleford/whats-inside/shopping/ellis-brigham/

Skiing in La Plagne is really good. It lacks a little in the nightlife although there are some bars/clubs but we've always been too tired for that, and for France, prices are quite reasonable.

If you were to go, choose your village carefully - we stay in Belle Plagne as it has a 5 or 6 restaurants(bars and a club) and is ski in/ski out but there are pros and cons to all of them.

I don't have any helpful advice/info but I'd be more drawn to LD Mountain Centre. A friend bought some skis from Snow and Rock by the metrocentre, and the shop refused to set the bindings - they didn't want to be held responsible, and told him to look it up.

I assume a one-off incident but it doesn't create a good impression. But if you go to that snow thing in Castleford/Leeds I believe you can test out the equipment from the shop to see how you like it, so that might help you get the right pair. Probably worth a trip to get the right pair.

Nationwide do it because they want themselves to be seen as fair - it wins them business. From people like me who once I had an account with them, also got my mortgage with them.

They campaigned for the abolition of ATM fees in Britain so I wouldn't necessarily be suspicous of that.

Official rate is 1.126. M%S, who as mentioned above are normally comeptitive, will give you 1.075 so you can see why the ATM despite the charges can work out cheaper.

As above - Nationwide flexaccount is by far the cheapest. Remember that then the transaction goes through it is against the full exchange rate, whereas any travel agent has already heavily weighted the rate in their favour.

Nationwide didn't use to charge any fee whatsoever, but unfortunately they've recently had to pass on Visa's cash handling charge which I think is around 1%. This will still be a much better return than the exchange rate you'd get changing your money here. Plus you don't have to guess how much money you need for the holiday and either run out or pay to return to sterling, plus if you get mugged your entire week's spending isn't gone!

Don't know about the other banks but I'd be surprised if using debit cards in the ATM still wasn't competitive with changing in a travel agent. If you do want to change it here I think M&S are generally the fairest.