Really want to go to the alps next year, but credit crunch hitting hard. Any recommendations on the cheapest way of doing it? How much is a week gonna cost, going with one or two mates, can drive/fly...
five star accommodation not a must...
Lots of appartments in the Portes du Soleil region, that are not to badly priced (we paid £260 p/w) that will fit 6 a push. Travelling by road is OK if you can get into one vehicle, but make sure it's diesel, as it's much cheaper than petrol in France (about €0.98/l). Book the ferry well in advance and be prepared to travel at an unsocialable hour to get the best deals. Travelling on A roads minimises toils, but be prepared to take longer. Take the bulk of food from the UK as it's more expensive. DON'T skimp on insurance, as accidents could work out very expensive if you need an airlift. Oh, remember to take spares for you bike from the UK, they are expensive locally in PDS.
Traveling on the Motorway is time and fuel efficient, and route finding is easy. The A Roads (or RN) can be more stop-start, especially through towns/villages.
if you want to it on the cheap cheap then camp. the campsite in Les Gets is awesome, last time I was there it had free hot showers, free washing and drying facilities, use of kitchen, dining room, lounge with TV, great pitches with a morning view of mont blanc, and a baker that drives up every morning with fresh croissants etc. All for a few euros a night. Its up a hill from Les Gets centre (on Mt Chery side) so its a lift run or road slog back, but if you drive down then you can get into town easily enough. Les Gets seems to have cheaper restaurants than Morzine too.
Lots of ghetto chalets, especially recently. Spoke to an owner who's been out there 20 yrs and business was so bad this year many owners packed up and shut shop for the summer, so there is plenty of haggling room on most chalets (we haggled a nice central chalet down from 1300 euros to 1000 a couple of years ago).
If youre gonna fly dont do saturday to saturday, flying on quieter days saved us so much money we had the extra days there for free.
Second flatlander's comments on insurance from personal experience this year 🙁 Mr MC broke his knee on Pleney run in Morzine. Got off the mountain with pompiers for free. Then-
Xray in Morzine 250 euros
ambulance to clinic in thonon 250 euros
pharmacy bills (drugs, crutches) 250 euros
taxi to visit Mr MC 140 euros round trip per day
surgery under general anaesthetic, 3 days in hospital- I dread to think luckily insurance paid it direct.
two extra seats on plane again paid direct by insurance.
If we'd needed a helicopter instead of the pompiers in their truck that would have been another 4 figure sum...
even tho the tolls will work out around the 60 EUROS mark each way its not worth trying to avoid them. We're going for a long trip next year so i was looking into saving a bit of money and going around them but by the time u've paid the few tolls you have to and going the fairly sizeable way around so diesel and the extra time it takes you on an already epic ride its really not worth it. Depends on how long your going as to whether to you need to take spares so needing to drive nd whether you want the adventure of driving compared to the hassle of sitting on a plane and hoping they didnt chuck your bike in the back.
Flowmtb.com have a B&B chalet in Morzine.
This year 4 of us roadtripped 2700 miles round the alps going into switzerland, italy and france, we went to soo many places
pila, alp du huez, les alps, les gets, morzine, morgans, crans montana, les du alps and many more that i have forgot as they all sound the bloody same 😀 it was amazzzing split between 2 of us per car in a car that struggled to get 350 miles for £50odd quid we didnt spend more than 800 each.
it was more expensive because we were going to lots of places but things you cant avoid are day lift passes work out about 20 euros a day.
camping works out 8 euros a head
food works out about 8euros a day if you buy it but we took cans and a cooker and pasta ect and made buttys so a bit cheaper
petrol costs and toll roads
all in all i think if i made a consious effort to keep it cheap as chips it'd have been about 500 each for 2 weeks visiting most of the best tracks in europe and not just getting sucked into les gets like too many people do
well worth it highly recommeded, met some great people and road some immense tracks!
Your profile says you live in Cardiff so....
Easyjet Bristol to Geneva arond £85 return inc bikes. (Find free parking near airport!)
Geneva to Chamonix - either cycle the 100km or use [url] http://chamexpress.com/ [/url] for transfer 25 euros each way inc. bike to your lodgings.
Camp in Chamonix valley. From around 6 Euros per night. And when you stay in official accomodation, including campsites, in the Cham valley then you're entitled to a free travel pass that covers trains and buses between between Servoz and Vallorcine. You can take your bike on the train.
Cook your own food from the, sadly not cheap, supermarkets and make sure you stay out of outdoors gear/clothing shops! Also, maybe avoid bars and clubs by partying each night with climbers in campsite drinking cheap beer & wine 🙂
You can miss out on a lift pass to save more money and cycle up the tracks if you're fit.
One thing you can do is get the train up to Le Tour, cycle up over the mountain to the Swiss border and hammer down the other side towards Vallorcine where you can use your free travel pass to get the train back over into Chamonix.
I found plenty of trails around the Cham valley to keep me in trouble for a week this June. Note though, that from end of June a lot of trails are officially closed to MTBs for the summer.
Apparently you can also take your bikes on some of the buses now as well....
[url] http://www.chamonix.com/page.php?page=13&r=transport_in_the_valley&ling=en [/url]
Thanks guys for some great tips. Think camping might be a great idea, especially if there are good facilities. I kind of thought a car would be a must (either drive over, or rent from Geneva) but I didn't know about these travel passes. I could see it being a lot more hassle to get around though, or is that me just being lazy?
If you want to do it on the cheap, don't go to Morzine/Les Gets.
Go to one of the hundreds of other resort towns; you will find lots of them cater very well for mountain bikers, and because they are not so 'popular', they have far cheaper lift prices, thousands less people and no stutter/braking bumps!
We spent a week in Valloire this year, after a week in La Clusaz and Morzine. Valloire had the best riding (XC and Downhill), the nicest atmosphere (so few English that we actually felt like we were in France!) and the cheapest lifts.
Want it cheaper? Don't follow the herd!
Oh, and drive down and camp, with as many people as possible in the car.
Dave
Good point there Dave. I suppose not having been to the alps yet, I want to make sure I'm riding the best trails, but then if they're packed then that's not going to be so great.
My old boss has an apartment in La Plagne which we use in the Winter for boarding, so just thought I might be able to use that at minimal cost, does anyone know what La Plagne is like for mountain biking. I'm more of an XCer but like to challenge myself on climbs and descents. Riding an Orange Five Pro, 140mm.
To say they're packed is probably an overstatement. I've been to Morizine a few times and whilst you may have to queue to get on a lift for 30 seconds (well you do on the Pleney anyway) it's hardly noticable. That said quite a few people seem to go to Morizine just session the Pleney over and over again, same with the Les Gets DH course (the new rubbish one, not the old World Cup course) - quite why, i've no idea as they're rubbish compared to what is out there. Try the swiss national course for a start.
In my experience Morzine has more DH type tracks, although if you know where to look you can find Singletrack esp over Champery way. Personally tho i prefer Les Arcs which is singletrack tastic. You could potentially get the TGV straight into Bourg as well.
go to one of the fewer visited spots.
i'd recommend ISCHGL in Austria. massive lift system. loads and loads of natural, less used trails.
i recently rode across the alps and it costs us ~300€ each inc. train fares. would have been less were we to have camped out each night with our tarp.
Robinbetts - La Plagne has a faiirly good network of MTBing trails of various skill levels but you can also use the Vanoise Express to travel over to the Les Arcs area to access their large network of trails.
Les Arcs also have a good offer for accommodation and lift pass [url= http://www.lesarcs.com/On-your-mountain-bikes.html ]here[/url].
Having friends who own accommodation in both Les Arcs 1800 and Le Plagne I actually do them a favour by popping down in the summer to use their places as they only use them in the winter.
sootyandjim being as you visit often i dont suppose you know the general cost for hiring a bike over there? we're doing quite a long stay next year and my mate wants his nephew to come for a week but being as he's flying alone it'll be easier for him to the rent a bike when he gets there.
Golfchick: I run a bike-holiday business near Les Arcs and, to be honest, I'd have to recommend against hiring a bike. The quality and set-up is "variable" at best. I've just had to take a bike back because it wasn't safe for a guest to ride.
We've had best results from Sport 2000 near McDonalds, cost is 175euros per week for a full-sus (XCish). More for a freeride or downhill bike. Still not great though.
Otherwise, Mich at La Grange au Skis up in La Rosiere (20mins drive from Bourg) has a great fleet of very well maintained bikes. 40euros per day for a good full-sus, 60euros per day for a DH bike.
thanks for getting back to me, i agree we'd rather not do it but he's only young so we have no choice but for him to fly and he's gonna be flying alone as it is, to ask him to fly his bike too will be too much for him. Do you know how much more for the dh type bike from sport 2000? do you have to give them a deposit too or is it just that basic cost? We could always pick it up off them on or way back from the aiport picking him up.
As Steve said, the quality of hire bikes varies greatly (especially as the season progresses). I've hired a bike in the Alps once before a while back but haven't since as I didn't feel right riding a bike that wasn't mine.
I've since built up an 'Alps bike' which I dig out for taking on holidays involving proper mountains or occasional forays onto a DH course in the UK.
On 'Sport 2000' Steve mentioned, they have shops at both Arc 1800 and Arc 1600 (just near the end of La Cachette DH course) that hire out Commencal mtbs and whilst I won't hire a bike now they looked to be pretty well maintained, just remember to flip the brake levers to the correct side if you do hire one.
yeah that's where i was thinking of cos i had seen both there but wasn't sure on costs to do that so my friend can tell his sister how much money she'd need to shell out for him to have this holiday.
I'm right in a friend telling me there is a full season pass available for about £100 isnt there??
I went to Les Menuires/La Clusaz for some offroading after the Etape du Tour and to catch the Annecy time trial.
In Les Menuires I rented a friends apartment but for the rest of the trip we camped, and it was excellent. Campsites have great facilities like swimming pools lined with hot Euro-babes. Can't complain. Also there were lots of other bikers to drink wine or beer with, so going out wasnt really needed.
The lift pass in La Clusaz was only 13 euros a day, and the lifts are open from 9 to 5.30 ish so you can get a massive amount of riding in even with a good rest over lunch.
On the 2nd day I managed to snap 2 spokes and bend my rear axle and a suspension link axle on my scott ransom. After touring bike shops in town I was eventually directed to Boss Cycles (or somthing like that) who told me to go for a beer and come back in 30 mins. Sure enough, they'd sorted everything (they were the ones who told me the axle and suspension were bent) and the cost to me for fitting the spokes and truing the wheel and axles? 14 euros. Staggering value and amazing service. And the routes around La Clusaz were also stunning.
Will be heading over again next year for sure, hopefully a bigger gang. This time we loaded a friends dads Xsara diesel estate with a roof box (2x offroad and 2x road inside) and it was really easy.
Just hope the pound gets some strength back as even the supermarkets were expensive. Thank the lord they have aldi in France too.
Good luck!
FWIW our upcoming holiday with the White Room in St. Foy is going to cost approx. £1000 for two of us.
That includes flights, accom., all but one nights food, transfers, insurance etc. No lift tickets as they'll be closed!
That seems pretty good considering we shouldn't really need to spend anymore once we're there, i hope!
How long is the drive to Morzine after the ferry from Dover?
I would allow 8hrs
I'd allow 10 to be on the safe side in case you hit traffic, need a wee, etc.
The campsite in Montriond is a slightly better bet than one in les gets IMHO. It's about a 10 min pedal up the river in the morning to the lifts in Morzine and nearer to a large (cheaper than the ones in town) supermarket. It's also easier to get to at the end of the day especially if you've been to Les lindarets or Switzerland as you can ride down the valley past lake montriond and straight to the site.
Driving should be cheaper than flying if there's a few of you. 3/4 in a car should be fine. £50 return ferry if you book reasonably in advance (check norfolk line for good deals, they always tend to be cheapest when I look). I did 2 weeks a few years ago in a chalet for £600 so camping should save a bit on that.
How about just outside Morzine (or the like), you can pick up a smart apartment for 4 in St Jean d'Aulps for £400, check out some of these trails (pictures taken on Sunday) http://www.ridemorzine.org/2009/08/the-best-trails-in-the-valley/ ? For me the key to making a cheap holiday work is finding the trails, it's a shame to cut costs but then turn up and be clueless about where to ride and finding a place with a bit of backup - garage and cleaning facilities.