A long weekend in the French ski resort of Morzine gave us the chance to experience the majestic Alps in summer and to soak up the sunshine on mountain walks.
It was chucking it down with rain in London as we left Heathrow Terminal 5 on British Airways flight 730 for Geneva and the weather forecast for our weekend in France was just as grim, with rain and storms predicted. Not that it stopped us packing the shorts and swimming gear, for we were nothing if not hopeful that the forecasters had got it wrong.
We’re big fans of the Alps in summer but it had been a couple of years since our stays in Kitzbühel in Austria and Garmisch-Partenkirchen in southern Germany, and I missed the mountains. At Geneva Airport we grabbed a sandwich, fond our hire car and drove out of the city towards Morzine – miraculously finding our way on to the right road despite Graham’s questionable navigation and my irritability. Marvellous scenery slipped by as we climbed into the French Alps before our destination appeared in a deep mountain valley beyond Les Gets. Morzine was bigger and busier than I thought it would be and mountain bikers, who flock here in large numbers in summer, were out in force.
We found our beautiful hotel, Le Dahu easily enough. Our traditionally decorated room looked out across the valley, offering some of the best views I’ve ever had in a hotel. Le Dahu isn’t that old. It was built in the mid-50s and has been extended several times since, but it felt traditional, as if it had been around for ever. Throughout there were photos of its founding family – whose descendants still run it today – and Morzine in times gone by. It was like living in a family photo album. But we didn’t hang around for long and went out in search of food and drink. We crossed the valley, carved by the River Dranse, on a handsome old pedestrian suspension bridge and rewarded ourselves in the early evening heat with a beer at the busy town centre bar CDC.
Later we crossed the road to eat at Le Chamade, and a very strange restaurant it proved to be. My simple fish terrine had odd accompaniments, such as a curious dollop of something that tasted like Christmas cake. My vast main course of various bits of lamb AND a pie came on two plates with more weird accompaniments, one of which was red goo that tasted about 25 times sweeter than Haribo. The staff were friendly enough but I think the chef had pretensions to be Heston Blumenthal and couldn’t quite pull it off. The Pinot Noir was quality though…
We’d planned our break to be a mix of walking and relaxing and as the weather forecast was so crappy for the days ahead, we decided to spend our first full day in town by the hotel pool. I’d slept remarkably well after my night of red wine and lager and we stumbled to breakfast fairly late and bleary eyed. The views across the valley from the restaurant, though, were more than enough to wake us up.
In the evening, after many hours of bone idleness, we explored more of Morzine, admiring its flower-filled planters and verges, its typical Alpine architecture. Paragliders launched themselves from the mountain tops into the blue skies above us, landing in the green fields on the edge of town
In the early evening we stopped for a beer at the Dixie Bar, where groups of mountain bikers were refreshing themselves after a day in the saddle. We ventured on and eventually found an average but popular pizzeria, Le Tyrolien, where we waited for ages because they forgot our order. I just wish it had been worth the wait.