Blog

What with the arrival of our little baby boy Lucas and plenty of great guests who have helped look after him, our second summer in Les Gets has been very eventful (hence our lack in recent blogs)!

There has also been plenty going on in Les Gets. It all kicked off with the huge Pass’Portes du Soleil. A challenging mountain bike ride covering 75kms of intense uphill and exhilarating downhill rides. We take our hats off to all those brave souls who took on the challenge!

Les Gets got very excited in July with the passing of the Tour de France - it came right through the town… twice! First came the floats doling out everything from haribo sweets to t-shirts and baby rattles, then all of a sudden there were eight helicopters in the sky, closely followed by the speeding cyclists.

That same week saw Les Gets’ bi-annual festival of mechanical music (how much excitement can a small town take?!). I love this kind of thing - mad musical instruments being turned, pulled and ridden (yes, like a bike) and plenty of locals dressing up in the traditional smocks and frocks.

There were some great mustaches on show too!

Then there was the international downhill mountain biking event in Chatel, the cowboy barrel racing and the young people’s mountain bike trials, which saw teams of cyclists riding a course that ran through Les Gets in relay - down roads, up steps, along shop fronts, over snow and into the stream!

We’ve got a few more weeks left to the season, so were hoping to squeeze in more of the things we love doing out here - golf (Jim’s lark), walking (my cup of tea), visiting the mountain lakes and some of the pretty towns near by - Yvoire and St Gervais are next on our list.

And then there’s the winter season to think about - we’ll have fun devising new menus and giving our website a bit of a make over. But right now it’s day off, and we’re going to relax over a nice supper and a movie!

Jim and I are very proud to announce the birth of our first son, Lucas Alexander! Our eagerly awaited little boy was nearly three weeks ahead of schedule, born on 27th May. We’re both over the moon, and are completely in love with the little fella. Alas, it looks as though he’s already got us wrapped around his little finger! Here are some photos, for the baby enthusiasts amongst you:

At the beginning of the winter season two of our guests, Lilly and Imo, drew a couple of lovely pictures for Jim and I, and we were so impressed that we displayed them on our fridge in the chalet.

Since then, we’ve had many more wonderful drawings and sketches added to the ‘Fridge of Fame’, and here they all are, preserved forever!

(Alas, what with the fridge being so close to the action in the kitchen, one or two pictures became ’sauced’ and, though much loved, were sadly retired from the display.)

Thank you to everyone who helped make our fridge the most beautiful in the Alps!

This weekend saw the last of the skiing for the season here in Les Gets, and to mark the occasion there was a competition to find the best… or maybe the worst… Well, only brave souls entered, put it that way.

Always wanting to be part of the fun, Pure Mountain were representing in true style. One of our much-loved returning guests Maggie was in town, and we purloined Pavel from his cleaning duties with The Chalet Experience. Together with Jim, these fearsome 3 formed the team ‘Ready For Bed’.

It was a beautiful spring day with fab spring skiing conditions, so the 3 musketeers went for a ride on the mountain before attending The Games. Did I say they were dressed in nothing but nightwear?

So, with 30 odd teams competing for something, though nobody knew quite what, there was organised chaos at the bottom of the Chavannes all afternoon: A slalom race where the teams were tied to one another and had to walk part of the course due to the encroaching turf on the piste;

a human curling competition where you could get knocked over by a giant plastic mattress hurtling down the piste if you weren’t careful,

and a dizzying event designed to get you to fall into icy water in an attempt to retrieve a set of skis from the other side of a watery impass. All while wearing ski boots and silly clothing.

The highlight however was the water skiing - the grand finale to The Games. One after another (though I’m sure health and safety officials in the UK would have disputed this), competitors hiked up the hill, donned their skis then straight-lined it down in order to seamlessly glide from piste to water (a 20m-long purpose built ‘canal’), in the hope that they’d ski right to the end then pop back onto the piste.

Much to everyone’s surprise, a lot of people managed to complete this seemingly impossible task.

Our very own Maggie made a valiant effort and made it very nearly to the end of the canal, but not quite. Sopping, she emerged all smiles, and was definitely the winner of the competition in our eyes.

Unfortunately the water slide didn’t hold very long, so Pavel and Jim remained disappointingly dry. We must have excelled in all the other games though, as somehow, we managed to come 5th!

With the winter season nearly at an end, we’ve turned our thoughts to the summer, which is truly wonderful here in Les Gets. We’ve produced this little video so that you can see why it is that we think summer is the new winter!!

Also, we’re running a 15% discount on our summer holidays in the Alps this year.
Our prices and booking section has more info.