I had a fantastic door-to-door journey today in just under 12-hours and it was one of the easiest trips I’ve had yet. I tuned in to Doctor Karl en-route to the tunnel but he has either retired or was ill and the regular host Rod had replaced him with an Australian woman named Bianca. She was clever enough without a doubt but Doctor Karl has been a constant in my Guildford-Val d’Isere marathons for quite a few years and I hope it was just a one-off. After a slick crossing (love the tunnel set-up) I started with the Best of Bob Seger, followed by Led Zepplin11, then Pink Floyd followed by Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits, then the greatest from Van-the-Man, and then some Dire Straits and I may be missing one? It all worked out really well and I had great luck on the way up the valley as it was snowing heavily but hadn’t yet started to settle on the road because I’m allergic to chains!
It is looking incredibly wintery here like I haven’t seen this early in the season for many years and the snow cover is excellent. With any luck we’ve had some slides into the gorge and with the snow at 1850 metres being pretty wet maybe the Gorge du Malpasset will start to set up? Fingers crossed!
I’ve a load of unpacking and preparing for the opening tomorrow but I might sneak in a little 30-minute ‘skin’ just to get the body moving? Stay tuned!