Ski Club of Manchester Trip to La Tania, March 2025

Reporter: Tony Keates

When I first joined the club over 40 years ago, my first club holiday was to Courchevel 1850, in the Hotel Bon Sejour, with Supertravel. I have skied the Three Valleys area several times since but had never been to La Tania, hence the choice of holiday.

Check-in at Manchester Airport went very smoothly, as did clearing security, the new scanning system meaning that we did not have to take anything out of our bags or pockets or take boots off — a real bonus. The only items to be taken off were belts, including for some reason, plastic belts.

Take-off was only slightly delayed, and the flight went very smoothly. However, things changed drastically when we arrived at Chambery Airport! For a start it was raining and some of the luggage was left exposed to the rain for a while. Having cleared passport control we entered the usual chaotic baggage reclaim area. The area was packed and neither of the luggage carousels had any indication of which carousel had the luggage from which flight. However, everybody was eventually reunited with their baggage and skis. Later when unpacking at the hotel, several members, including myself, discovered that some items had got damp while waiting in the rain to be put on the carousels.

The coach transfer was very smooth and relatively short, only around one and a half hours. On arrival at the Hotel Montana, we had the usual scrum to get our luggage up to the reception area in a small lift, however all went well as did the allocation of rooms. The reception staff and Manageress were very helpful and efficient.

On entering our room, Greg and I were disappointed to see that there was only a standard size double bed, so Greg went to reception to see if there were any other rooms available. There were not, but they said, “No problem, we will put another bed in the room!” Sure enough, 10 minutes or so later, two members of the housekeeping team turned up with a single bed, mattress and duvet — excellent service!

The room was the most spacious room that I have ever stayed in on a club holiday. Even with the extra bed there was plenty of room to move around and plenty of storage and hanging space. The only slight disappointment was that there was no bath, but we had a very good shower. A bonus was that because our room was on a corner of the building, we had two big windows which gave us great views of the slopes and the surrounding countryside.

The meals on the whole were very good, with a choice of three starters, three main courses and three desserts each night, the final night featuring Savoyard specialities such as tartiflette. However, there were a couple of times when my meat was not cooked enough for my liking and the vegetables were a bit on the hard side. One unusual thing was that this was the first hotel on a ski holiday when there was no complimentary wine with the meals. The bar area was large with a big open fire and the choice of drinks was good, the cocktails proving particularly popular with our members! Snow conditions were pretty good, but later in the week with amazingly high temperatures on the slopes of up to 18deg.C by mid-afternoon and the snow became very heavy and very hard work with tired ski legs!

Departure day was very relaxing — as we were not being picked up until 8.30am we could enjoy a proper breakfast — a very unusual occurrence on ski holidays! The coach journey to the airport was short and uneventful and after the usual check-in chaos at Chambery Airport, the flight home was smooth with no problems, bringing to an end a very enjoyable ski holiday.