It’s actually pretty tricky to write an explanation to why this is true from perhaps the most idyllic bar/ restaurant in all the Alps (Le Hors Piste, Chatel)! We’re dry, have mains power, speedy wifi and people bringing us amazing food and drink.
Because it doesn’t matter if you’re in the pimpest motorhome on the planet, winter touring in a motorhome, particularly for long stints, requires a sense of humour!
First it’s important to say that we are fully loaded. Brand new motorhome (which stands for nothing with hindsight), hardcore heating system, winter pack (ha!), refillable gas bottles, and a robust modern generator. And despite all this, it’s not for the feint hearted… for a lot of very unexpected reasons.
- Outside cooking is nowhere near as fun as you would expect
- 100 litres of water doesn’t go very far
- Power is more precious than you ever knew before
But emptying your toilet is not at all gross – it’s actually probably the easiest and most sanitary thing about motorhome living!
Week 2: More Things We’ve Learned on our Motorhome Ski Adventure
- Less is less. The fewer things you have that can go wrong, the fewer things go wrong. KISS is the philosophy to have when you’re in a motorhome touring in sub zero temperatures day in day out
- As soon as you simplify your life, it seems that it becomes impossible to make even the most straight forward of decisions. “which socks do you want?” I don’t know. *meltdown*
- There’s an Alpine aire conduct equivalent of getting up at 5am to put your towels on the best deck chairs. It’s called EHU (‘electric hook up’) and the British way of diplomacy and co-operation doesn’t work if you want to use EHU. It requires sneakiness and double enders (see Motorhome Ski Electrical Essentials!)
- Resource scarcity is a thing. Monitoring your consumption is a very grounding activity. From batteries to water, kitchen roll to toothpaste, you scrutinise your use of everything
- Resorts have so much more going on than a package holiday maker knows about. Go to the tourist office – France in particular knows how to do tourist offices. They’re amazing
- If you live or travel in a motorhome at sub zero, you need a Karcher window vac
- If you’re making your bed each night, do it before you go to the pub
- France is very serious about its public holidays. You cannot buy a discounted sofa or a telly on New Year’s Day. You can’t even buy a beer
- Truckers are royalty. They get facilities that make the posh service stations in the UK (you know, the ones with the farm shops) look like grotty transport caf’s and the best thing you can do is pretend to be a trucker
- All the Aires is not ‘all the aires’. It’s some of the aires. And the aires that are in All the Aires are not all open in the winter – use apps like Park4Night and CamperContact too for cross reference
So there you have it. End of week two and we’ve made it. Three aires down and not given into the lure of a fully equipped campsite yet!
