Low-cost weekend skiing now a reality
Added: (Fri Oct 07 2005)
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-BEGINS -
Low-cost weekend skiing now a reality
For years it was only the rich who could take off on a Friday for a weekend's skiing in Gstaad or wherever. Mere mortals had to save up their pennies and their days off for a week's rental in an alpine high-rise.
No longer! An enterprising french outfit, FRANCE A LA CARTE, have taken their cue from Ryanair, easyJet and other low cost carriers into France to create cheap ski weekends for everyone. "Taking a week off work for a ski trip is not always appreciated by employers", says their MD Sylvie Butler, "but slipping away on a Friday for the weekend is hardly noticed." And that's what France à la carte provide: three night breaks with 2 or 3 star hotel accommodation, ski pass and hire car from the airport included.
The price for this exoticism? Around 250 euros per head. (c £170). If 4 people are sharing the car its even less. This doesn't include airfares but with Ryanair offering tickets to Pau for £14.95 and to Grenoble for free canny customers can usually get there and back for less than £50.
What's the trick? For a start France a la carte concentrate on the french Pyrenees, cheaper and more 'authentic' than the Alps. Using a Stansted-Pau flight you can be warming your toes in your hotel in St Lary or Barèges less than 3 hours after leaving Britain. The Pyrenean resorts are all easily accessible from the main low-cost airports: Pau, Toulouse, Carcassonne, Perpignan and Girona (in N Spain). "But", warns Sylvie Butler, "we wouldn't touch Andorra: it is far too inaccessible, over three hours from the airport and inevitably blocked by heavy snow."
France a la carte choose mainly village locations - real villages where people live all year round and where your croissant has been baked during the night. "The alpine resorts have become 'always bigger - always better' with monstrous high-rises and gigantic queues at the lifts. This is unknown in the Pyrenees."
And the skiing? In general the ski domains in the Pyrenees are less extensive than their alpine brethren. But they get a lot more sunshine and, most importantly, there is very little queuing: you have two runs under your belt by the time your alpine counterpart has got to the lift.
Sylvie admits that they do offer a couple of alpine locations - the unjustly forgotten Olympic resort of Chamrousse above Grenoble (remember Jean-Claude Killy?) and the sunny Riviera resort of Isola 2000 just north of Nice (direct low-cost flights from Liverpool and Belfast).
Her tip for a trouble-free 'low-cost' ski weekend? "Find your flight first by booking well ahead of time. Then we'll arrange a weekend around those flights. " It's as simple as that.
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