What’s it like skiing from a campervan in the French Alps?

What’s it like skiing from a campervan in the French Alps?

Hi we’re Richard and Jackie from early retirement wonderlust and if you’ve seen any of our previous videos you will know that we are currently living in the Alps in our little VW Camper van it has absolutely chucked it down for the last two days in the valley but that means it

Has been dumping it down with snow up in the mountains and there is a forecast for a bluebird day tomorrow so we are so excited about that and we want to bring you along water and all fly on the wall in the day in life of our early retirement Game Morning morning it is absolutely freezing out there it was forecast to be minus 18 today and I’m feeling all of those minus 18s but it is beautiful and what comes with minus temperatures is really really clear skies so we are so excited it’s a Saturday so fingers

Crossed it’s transfer day so it should be pretty quiet on the slopes so we’re going to try and get across to montal be which is the village that we went to last year with the kids it is the furthest part that you can get to on the

Domain of paradisi it’ll take all day to get there and back but I’m quite excited so yeah life in the van it’s not really as hardship as it actually seems we quite like it I actually love it in the van we sleep really well since we’ve

Been here for the last week I think we’ve averaged about 11 sleep because it gets dark really early and we just eat the tea and go to bed yeah so we can keep it really cozy in here because it’s such a tiny space to warm up so that’s

Not a problem we’re living the simple life and then the campsite facilities are just amazing so we can have hot showers whenever we want we’ve got the club room so it’s not too bad there are one or two negatives yeah vanli skiing does have its issues the lack of space

In the T6 occasionally does get to us everything that we own is rammed in the front of the van when we we go to bed at night we have to get the bed out every day but it’s just part of our routines I’m going to get Jackie in a minute to

Take a photo of what we can see because it might look sort of all right this way but it’s an absolute car crash that way but that’s just life in a small van yeah and it doesn’t actually bother us here because the campsite is great it’s got

The club room uh with a fire in it so we can just go and sit in there when we actually want some downtime and time to do things we only cook in here and sleep in here so so it’s now 5 8 and we are racing for the uh finicula to try and

Get first lift so we can get going over to montal bear so it’s just a quick 15-minute walk to the finicula and that’s it see you in a bit Bye So one of the things about staying at Bor San Marice at the campsite is it’s definitely not ski and ski out we have chosen to leave our skis up at the bicular top in art 1600 so we have a 15minute walk every day to get to the picula station but it’s something that

Actually we really enjoy and it does help me get my foot step there are various other options in terms of getting to the finicula the campsite has a uh shuttle bus service that you can sign up for and it goes every half hour so that’s just like a 5minute drive

Where they run you down to the ficula and pick you up there um and there’s also amazing public bus service as well which is complimentary um so that works well but as Jackie say it’s quite nice to get our morning steps in and on a morning like this it don’t get much better [Applause] So it’s 11:50 we got the first lift out of AR 1600 at halfast N9 and we haven’t stopped skiing but we are just above the restaurant where we were aiming for in plan monal which is just the most gorgeous little village yeah it’s one of our happy places it’s where our kids

Learn to ski and we were here last year with the kids but it’s been a heck of a ski over but the sun is out it’s still pluming freezing I think it said on the last lift we got it was minus 11 so it is really cold um we’ve had eight lifts

Only two of them have been bubble cars so all the rest of the lifts have just been freezing getting up here so lazy lunch I think uh and and an early lunch because it’s still just before noon but it’s G Puras We’ve had an absolutely fabulous day but my legs are absolutely done in the sun has Shone all day but it has just been so so cold which actually for skiing has been pretty brilliant in terms of it’s kept the snow conditions good but yeah lot of miles under the legs yeah and I

Really like the fact that we got to montal bear it’s our favorite place from when we had the kids young skiing sign of how cold it was during the course of lunchtime Jackie poured a glass of water and by the end of lunch it actually Frozen which only us crazy

Brits would be sat out on a sun turus at goodness knows what minus temperatures so pretty Goose now so we have a pretty easy evening routine don’t we yes I’m just going to have some food and I’m off to bed yeah and a shower oh okay I will have a shower in

The Amazing facilities so that’s it we hope you’ve enjoyed our life in the day of an early retirement ski we hope it’s giv you a bit of an insight into what it’s like skiing out of Borg San marce from a camper van but that’s it see you later Bye [Applause] You

If you are new to skiing, or a seasoned veteran, we invite you to join us on a typical day of our skiing in the French Alps from our VW T6 campervan. Life is very different camping in the valley…about as far from ski in-ski out that you can get, but it is a way that enables to stay in the mountains for longer.

In this video we will take you through every aspect of our day… from our journey to the slopes, to the skiing across Les Arcs and La Plagne to a lazy lunch at our favourite sunny ski village.

We are Richard and Jackie and we live in the UK. We retired from teaching at the age of 51 in the summer of 2022. Our plans for early requirement include relocating to the Yorkshire Dales, developing our forever home and travelling the UK, Europe and eventually the world in our VW campervan Nelson.

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Check out our blog http://earlyretirementwanderlust.com

Many thanks,

Richard & Jackie