TIGNES

Tignes is, of course, one of France's biggest and best known resorts - a skiing equivalent of Manchester City, perhaps: French Ski Resorts: The Premiership

It's white for most of the year - and, if you are keen, you can track the arrival of the season from about mid October onwards by visiting the Tignes website.  It rarely gets too hot here.  Here's a summer scene:

Tignes is clearly no beauty.  It's improving, though the austere setting means that a makeover will only go so far.  But it has a lot to recommend it, and in many ways is feels a lot more genuine than Val d'Isere, its show-off neighbour the other side of the hill.


If you're visiting Tignes, here are six good things about the resort:


1.  Parking at Les Brevieres (1550m) gives you direct access into the skiing - the drive from Bourg is less than 45 mins, and saves you another 600m vertical and having to find/pay for a spot in Lac.  Parking is free, although low marks for having no WC facilities at the main lift.  


2.  Parking at Les Boisses (at 1850m) is an alternative and you can either get a bus (15 or 45 past the hour) or lift up.  Be careful about the snowy car park if you don't have snowchains or winter tyres.


3.  The runs down to Les Brevieres (Black as well as the easier alternatives) have an away-from-it all feeling you don't get, for example, on the motorways between Tignes and Val.


4.  The Lagon sports centre in Lac is excellent (includes water slides etc and a gym used for "stages d'altitude" by French sports teams eg the very pink Stade Francais).  For a young family, including some non-skiers or kids who don't want to ski all day, this will add an extra dimension - worth staying close by though.


5.  The museum in the Maison de Tignes, charting the flooding of the old village and the history of winter sports in the area, is excellent.


6.  The ESF at Tignes does excellent one-to-one off-piste lessons, and the area is of course renowned for having lots of untapped territory.  Perhaps more interesting, though, are the collective "grand ski" courses the school runs, which include off-piste.  This is unusual, in my experience, and, like the Lagon, could give a week here a very different dimension.


Tignes claims to be the "most sportif" town in France, by the way.  It does always seem to be up to something - eg rather odd summer "beach rugby" tournaments.  The French football team trained here before their ill-fated trip to South Africa.  You can see the happy campers here.