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This was a trip where the diehard few set off to Villars were either going to have a fantastic weekend or not get there at all. For a while it seemed that this trip was destined to be cancelled. As only 15 members signed up for the trip the Club was forced to cancel the bus and turn the trip into a U-drive. This cut the prospective number of trippers to eight due to car & passenger constraints for those still willing to travel. Then the inevitable work commitments cut the trip to five, before a case on non-Swine flu finally cut the trip to four only 24 hours before the trip.
So
with the two who would be returning to the UK after the trip going by train and the other two by car the race was on. The train departed at 12:05 and the car 90 minutes later. By 14:30 it was starting to get interesting as the first train connection in Basel had been missed by seconds causing an hour delay. By 15:30 the race was effectively over as the car was sitting in a garage in Appenweier hooked up to a computer. No happy Top Gear ending with the car beating the train but thanks to everyone at Autohaus Geiger, both in Appenweier and Kehl, the weekend trip was still on and the car only limped in about two hours behind the train/taxi.
One of the nice things about travelling down without the bus was that we were all there in time for a nice relaxing dinner at Restaurant Peppino before heading off into town to Charlie’s Bar.
Saturday started well with bright sunshine and clear blue skies though it has to be said that some of the pistes were in need of some new snow. Sending Mike back to change the table booking to an indoor table at the Golf restaurant turned out to be a good thing, as by 13:30 the weather was turning and the wind was picking up.
After
a good, if somewhat rushed, lunch (maybe picking the restaurant just below the main Villars 24-hour race area wasn’t the best idea) the skiing continued. The slightly cloudy visibility (or Mike’s sense of direction) led to a ‘more interesting’ descent than we’d been expecting while racing down to what turned out to be a dead-end in the trees. Down safely we eventually headed skied down but managed to miss the turn off to the hotel and had to walk back to Barry's bar for some après ski beers where some ex-pat locals started telling us about the “top of the mountain hot-tubs”.
