Another dreadful journey
Tuesday January 19, 2010 - Email this article to a friend

He was trying to get from Exeter to La Plagne.  A fairly simple route you might think........

"Five of us , my two daughters who are 18 & 21 years old and their boyfriends drove from West Cornwall, UK in my VW Transporter surf bus a day earlier than our flight from Exeter was due to fly. 

We thought we'd beat the snow that was forecast for the South West and might stop us from even getting to the airport.  So we stayed in Exeter the night before.

As it happened the snow on the Friday and Saturday (9th Jan 2010) didn't fall in the UK so we thought nothing could go wrong. Or could it?

On arrival at the airport all flights on the departure board, except ours, were delayed. Too good to be true? An announcement....."All passengers flying to Chambery on the 14.25 flight with Flybe, your flight will leave on time."

Woo hoo.......yes....yes.....fists punching the air in delight from us all. Then the tannoy goes on to say:

"However this flight will be diverted to Turin as all flights to and from Chambery are cancelled as there are adverse weather conditions."

Our initial elation was dampened a little but at least we're getting closer to the Alps. Our flight was uneventful.

We landed at Turin. No problems - or so we thought. It was then revealed to us by our travel company rep that the baggage handlers at Turin were worried that they wouldn't get paid if they handled our baggage so they wouldn't place it on the baggage carousels.

We then had several hours of passengers blaming the weather, the problem with the baggage handlers, the world's financial crisis or anything they could think of on the rep who knew little more than us.

Some people! Frustrated we were, but it wasn't his fault.

Some people lost all sense of reason! Six hours and thirty minutes later we got our baggage and walked out of the airport onto a comfortable coach.

Could anything else go wrong? Surely not.

It was then revealed that the expected journey time from Turin to La Plagne was an estimated 6 hours. Aaaaagh!

"Keep calm" I was telling myself and the kids. "This is dead time. We couldn't ski tonight even if we arrived on time."

09:00 hrs we arrived. 14 hrs late and no sleep. I asked the holiday rep, " We've not eaten or had access to buy food now for 16 hours. What food is available to us?"

Now tell me if you think I'm being unreasonable here, but I expected for breakfast to be laid on for us.

The answer, "The spar is open across the road if you want to buy something."

Now, the sun had come up, the lifts were open and the piste's were calling. No sleep, no food, no sense of humour.

Ski or sleep......ski or sleep. Ski, Ski, Ski?

So, off we went to the slopes. It took us a few days to not feel sleep deprived but the perfect conditions, good snow and sun seemed to erase the journey from our minds.

An excellent week was had by all. What a nightmare journey? Can anyone beat that?"

PlanetSKI reporter, Jane Peel, told us of her journey here.  Both trips seem a complete nightmare and we are full of admiration for the spirit and determination of all concerned.  Hopefully it will be better next time.......

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