Blogout

08.30 pm.

Hello, the last few days have been interesting to say the least.

We're home.

The snow kept coming, and we decided to make a break for it.

Why? I hear you ask

Friday night, the night of our arrival, it had snowed heavy. When we tried to ski on Saturday morning, the lifts and pistes were closed. Only four lifts out of 84 were open.

We spoke to a representative of the resort, she was helpful and told us that there wouldn't be any changes to the lift and piste status today. She also highlighted that the weather would be turning later in the day and again more snow was expected up until Tuesday, with us leaving on Wednesday. As we were talking with her, she continued on to explain that there had been an avalanche on Friday night and the the one road in and out of St.Anton was closed.

We looked at each other and couldn't believe our luck and how events were unfolding.
We pressed her for more information, but the amount of snow and conditions like this were unprecedented. She advised to go to the police station to find out what was happening with the roads.
I know, going to a police station of my own free will and accord, that's how bad it was.
So at the police station, we spoke to a police lady, us standing outside and conversing with her through an intercom. A situation that i was somewhat unaccustomed, but it was nice. She  basically said that they were going to close the road, and reopening it possibly tomorrow but couldn't say for sure.
So it was decided, a break we needed to make. The thought of being trapped there and not being able to ski was horrid.
We tried to get a taxi back to the hotel, but the town was gridlocked.
So we went back to the hotel, it got a little heated between myself and the hotelier. I started to scare the new guests checking in, telling them about the ski situation. The hotelier didn't see the funny side of this either. Anyway, we said bonjour to the German wannabe and we were away.
We crawled out of st anton in bumper to bumper traffic and made it to the motorway.

Yes, again having to get down in the snow to remove the b****rd snow chains. (the snow was that bad that, even with the formidable off road prowess of the invincible, snow chains were necessary)

We joined the motorway, it was extraordinarily busy. With traffic moving very slowly. We started to think that we were not going to get away.

We eventually reached the bottom of the mountains, filled up with fuel and got the f**k out of dodge.  We blasted up to calais.

We had no idea whether there would be a ferry by the time we arrived there, or whether we could get on it or even if there was anything we could do when we get there. With an estimated arrival time of 10:30pm in calais, and having made sure that the satnav was allowing toll roads we pushed forward, adopting French driving tactics of gently sitting right up the arse of anyone in my way. They soon learned.

Something that I have learned from the return leg of the tour is that, my Sat nav is, like me, a little optimistic when giving estimated arrival times. I mean, I say to people I'll be there by 10. I actually mean I'm going to arrive by at 10:30. Well, I learnt just how frustrating this is especially when the Sat nav gave us an eta of 10:30. We arrived at calais at 11:10pm. Now, as you can probably imagine I wasn't hanging around, so to see the eta keep creeping up was nigh on infuriating.
How can something that plans your journey and takes you through tolls actually add time to your journey. Yeah, that's right at each toll, I would watch another couple of minutes added to the eta. How can a route planning bit of kit take you on a route which has planned stops not take this into consideration?!

Calais,
We got there, YES there was another ferry. But it was 11:15pm, at a ferry terminal with a ferry leaving in an hour and i was once again in the hands of a foreigner who could smell the desperation of an Englishman who wanted to come across the 21miles of water more than anything. So, what else could he do?

Ramp the f**king price up and rip me off. I'm sure he could have just swapped it, but no he ripped the arse out of it.

Then the French police took the piss and stopped us. Why would you stop me? I thought to myself? well you don't stop anyone from sangatte, or anywhere else. Why not stop someone who's going home. Tossers.

The ferry, to add salt to the wounds, was empty, old and dirty.

The only passengers were eastern blockers straight off the set of a cheap horror movie.

Just get me home!!!!

We arrived safely home.

There will be one more blog.
Hope you have enjoyed the journey with us...

J&S