Getting to Chatel

I’ve always wanted to live in France.

We used to come to France most years as a kid and I always warmed to the French way of life and their inimitable joie de vivre. I love walking to the patisserie dans le matin and asking for quatre croissants et deux baguettes. The conviviality of the baker and the simple pleasantries French life has to offer always endeared this country to me.

I was having dinner a couple of years ago with my girlfriend, Debs when I asked her if she’d like to live in France and she lit up like a Belisha Beacon. With her being French it was always going to go down well. My job as a caddy on the Ladies European Tour means I need to be near an airport and to base ourselves in France would mean I could also drive to half a dozen events. So with the all clear from the wife and every reason pointing to a positive move it was just a case of where.

Chamonix has always been somewhere I have warmed to as I feel comfortable, at home and having travelled a fair bit around the globe I still haven’t seen many places that outdo the stunning scenery that Chamonix valley has to offer. So we booked a flight out to Geneva in the summer to have a drive around the Alps for perhaps a little village to call our own.

We drove around the Alps for a week taking in Chamonix, Megève, and stopping in various little villages in between but didn’t really settle on anything. Cham was still top of the list for me but it is also one of the most expensive places on earth so an alternative resort needed to be sought.

We did however come home from our little trip telling all and sundry that we were moving to the Alps asap. The idea was met with a little bemusement and a touch of jealousy from a select few but friends and family assumed it was just another idea that we had but that it would never actually take off.

A year on we got chatting to Cat, a friend of Debs who had just done two seasons in a little village called Châtel. Three kilometres from the Swiss border and south east of Evian Les Bains it looked like a decent location. So we met up with him for a drink and collect a few contact details. A brief beer later and we were kitted out with a handful of people to call and once home I emailed the two on the top of the list.

Within 24 hours we had a reply from both places and a call to Gavin at Bar L’Avalanche secured us a job and accommodation. Parfait!

It’s never easy planning a four-month trip away but eventually we let the flat Brighton quicker than anticipated and with a flight booked for Debs and a ferry booked for me we were off! A friend of mine has always maintained that everyone should do a ski season and, a little late int eh day perhaps, we were about to do it.

I had a couple of events to do in Spain before I could settle in to life as a ski bum. They were completed a little earlier than expected so I hit the road from Girona around 3pm and without looking at the map headed northeast towards Montpelier. My faithful steed is a Smart car. Not a particularly practical vessel to transport my worldly possessions in but it does the job. With a ‘me-shaped’ pocket carved out from all my stuff, the little thing was fairly laden and thus limiting fuel economy. This meant stopping every 150 miles to fill up. Couple that with the French tolls every hundred miles and the trip dragged on a little longer than expected. Thankfully I had stopped at the petrol stations of Spain and stocked up on a few San Miguels for company.

I avoided the centre of Geneva and scooted south of the lake towards Thonons-Les-Bains. I’d done this journey a few months ago when the tour rolled into Evian-Les Bains, so I knew the way. The weather was appalling. It was raining hard and bloody cold. My little car should probably have had new wiper blades two years ago and the limited tread on the tyres wasn’t exactly dispersing the water underneath. One headlight bulb had given up the ghost on the way through France the first time too so visibility was crap, the sound of flapping rubber on glass and the occasional sideways swagger made the journey out of Thonon up towards Chatel a little hairy.

Having left at 3pm I had calculated the trip to take around eight hours. It was midnight by this time and I was running out of patience and more importantly beer. The road from Thonon to Chatel is a windy little number with a sheer drop to the right into a fast-flowing, rather chilly looking river below. Hairpins arrive a little off cue allowing the grip-less beast to weave into the oncoming traffic. It’s a testing drive at the best of times and this was not the best of times.

Through the steamy, streaming window I spotted a roundabout in the nick of time and through the driving sleet saw the sign to Chatel. Breathing a sigh of relief I swung around the roundabout only to see a sign blocking the road saying ROUTE BARREE! Now I‘m no French scholar but that was pretty clear to me. La deviation suggested a gentle canter over La Col De Corbiere and a bright yellow arrow pointed me towards an even smaller road with lower visibility and somehow worse weather. This was the first time on the trip that I decided to dig out the map. When you're so near your destination, tired, out of beer and desperate to start your new life with your girlfriend, a treacherous mountain path isn’t quite what you fancy.

So with the wheel in one hand and the map in the other, I weaved the little car around the tightest hairpins you can imagine and realised that the page I wanted wasn't there. I could see Geneva on page 97 but the adjoining page 98/99 was AWOL. My patience was bubbling over now and I called Debs to see if she could assist my plight. It was gone one in the morning now and the road I was on was horrible. She said that the two maps we had were both in the car so I stopped to have a look. The car was so full I gave up within a minute as it would have meant dismantling the contents of the car that I had painstakingly assembled like a game of Tetris some weeks before. Every square inch was consumed with something or other that I had deemed potentially essential.

Like a typical man, I just decided to drive on. I had no idea where I was going or how long la deviation would be. The sign I had just seen had told me that Chatel was 27km away. That would have been the quick route I figured. This way could have been anything up to and over 50km.

I suspected under different circumstances it would have been a picturesque little track. Climbing up through the French Alps on a testy, windy road through some of the finest natural scenery Europe has to offer. At this time I felt like I was in The Blair Witch Project.

I drove up and up and up through the heavy rain until the rain turned to sleet and then into snow. I was really high up. My ears had popped several times - that’s not saying much as they generally pop when I go up a flight of stairs - but still, I knew I was deep in Haute Savoie now. Whenever I see the words Haute Savoie I think of fondue. I’m pretty sure here in the middle of nowhere on a road no one has ever driven down before, I could smell cheese.

Just when I thought I couldn’t possibly go any higher I turned yet another hairpin and the road straightened up through some delightful chalets perched on the edge of the cliffs. They were all dark with only the occasional porch light for security. I hoped our little place was going to be something like this. As I was dreaming I gathered my thoughts just in the nick of time to see I had run out of road. I was in a cul-de-sac. Had I driven the last forty minutes up this hill only for it to be a dead end? Surely not. I have to confess I let out a little whimper. It was now nearly 2am, I’d been driving for 11 hours – uphill – I was hungry, tired, out of beer and the fuel gauge was now informing me I had two litres left in the tank.

I reluctantly turned the car around and tried to figure out where I had gone wrong. Six or seven miles down the road again I realised I had inadvertently turned up a lane rather than continue on the road to Châtel.

I plodded on through the night until I finally reached the peak of this no man’s land. Just as well as my gauge was now showing a solitary litre left. I gave the engine and petrol supply a little breather and rolled down the other side of the mountain in neutral. Not what your driving instructor would recommend but sometimes needs must.

Half an hour later I finally hit the flat and cruised through a village called Abondance. Looked pleasant enough. Looked like it might have a lot of things here too. Not a lot going on at this time of night/morning though. On I drove passing a closed petrol station much to my anguish. I started climbing again and arrived at a smaller town called La Chapelle. Again it looked quaint and under different circumstances, I would have loved to stop pour un petit café. All I could think of was bed. Not my bed – that was a long way back - any bed.

The fuel gauge was reading 0.0 now but I had no choice but to plod on. Around dozens of bends I went through the early morning until I reached a roundabout with a sign saying Châtel 3km. Hallelujah! I called Debs to relay the good news and she instructed me to carry on and that she’d come out and welcome me to our new home.

Within a few minutes, I could see her in her dressing gown in the middle of the road waving me into the driveway like a pit lane girl. I pulled in to the steep driveway and turning off the engine I let out a huge sigh of relief. 

There were parts of the last few hours where I thought the worst but my faithful steed had battled on through heavy rain, snow, sleet, treacherous roads, hardly any fuel with a full load and a tipsy pilot to bring me safely to my girlfriend and start a new life as a ski bum.

Bless my little car.

CK