Day 91: So much snow!

The snow that greeted us at Dorrie's was the last we saw while we were there – apart from a little bit of rain, the weather was mostly sunny and warm (for the Alps in winter) for the entirety of our stay – until this morning, that is. Early in the trip, we managed to set up another house-sit – this time for an English family living in a little village called Le Mont-Pèlerin , which sits above the city of Vevey and Lake Geneva, only an hour and a half's drive from Dorrie's. The timing was perfect – they were leaving for a holiday in South Africa just as Dorrie had a new set of guests arriving. What wasn't quite so perfect was the timing of the blizzard that greeted us when the alarm went off at 6am this morning. We had budgeted for an hour to get ready, then the hour and a half to get to Le Mont-Pèlerin for the handover at 8.30am – just before the family had to head off to the airport. Obviously, we hadn't budgeted for the 15 centimetres or so of snow that had already fallen and the huge flakes that were still coming down in abundance. But hey, we have snow tyres, we'll be fine, won't we?

Well, no. About halfway down the mountain we spotted numerous brake and hazard lights ahead. Kate pumped the brakes and slithered to a stop a bit closer to the car in front than we would have liked. And there we sat, in the dark, getting progressively colder as the snow continued to fall around us. After a while, I got out to see if I could figure out what was going on – and whether we should turn around, as some of the cars were. But although I walked a fair way down the road, falling on my arse a few times in the process, I couldn't see what was causing the hold-up and trudged back up to the car, stopping to help some Germans put on their snow chains on the way. 

After a while, we started to move, but not very far, and I hopped out for another look around. This time, I came across police and other traffic-control types dealing with the situation – and a few cars sitting awkwardly in the road, which were apparently the source of the problem. (One driver asked me to give her a push, but the traction on my shoes was about as good as that on her tyres so I wasn't really much help.)

The police soon had things sorted and about an hour after we had stopped, we were on our way again. We were one of the first cars to get going, so the road in front of us was very snowy and we made very slow, cautious progress down the hill. Partway down, we had a call from Bronnie, our house-sit contact, wondering where we were as we had already missed our deadline, but we still had a long, fraught journey ahead of us. 

We eventually made it down to Sierre and, spotting a supermarket, decided to pull over to stock up on supplies – the way the snow was falling, it looked an awful lot like we were going to be snowed in for a few days. It took us a while to figure out how to get from the road to the car park, but eventually we were under cover and breathing a quiet sigh of relief to be out of the snow. Indeed, it felt slightly surreal to be walking into the brightly lit, warm and near-empty supermarket.

Back on the road, we navigated our way onto the motorway, which clearly hadn't been cleared very recently. The surface was like an ice-skating rink and we joined the traffic crawling along at about 40 km/h. Occasionally, a car – almost invariably Italian - would pull out into the left-hand lane and forge a new trail through the snow as it overtook the more cautious drivers, but we were happy to live life in the slow lane.

After a while, the snow started to ease off a little and before too long we arrived at our exit, but our troubles were far from finished. Now, over the 90-odd days we've known Sally, we've discovered that she doesn't mind a 'rat run'. And under ordinary circumstances, that's fine – heading off the main drag down a little side street can add a bit of adventure to a journey and show you a different, more interesting side to things. Today was far from ordinary, however, and the rat run Sally sent us down led us into all sorts of bother. Instead of taking us up the lovely wide, and almost certainly snow-ploughed main road to Le Mont-Pèlerin, she sent us off along the 'quickest' route, which started with some very narrow, steep (and thankfully empty) roads through the village of Chardonne and then out into the all-white fields that surround it. 

Kate eventually balked at driving up a completely indistinct 'road' that Sally had suggested and stopped to ask directions from a woman out walking her dog in the middle of the blizzard(!). Thankfully, she spoke good English and was very helpful. She sent us on a slightly different route, but this road also proved to be too steep and our lovely new snow tyres lost traction on the icy road. I climbed out and tried to push (in my tractionless shoes) and clear some snow away from the wheels, and we made some progress, but not much. A woman eventually appeared from the house adjacent to where we were stranded and gave me some mats to put under the wheels, which got us moving again, but it wasn't until her husband appeared that the pendulum swung our way again. He had both a snow shovel and some advice on the best route to take, and started to clear the snow off the road ahead of us. When I offered to help, he got another shovel and in no time, the car was up over the steep section that had been thwarting us and onto the ploughed (private) road that led off it and up to a nearby five-star hotel – and thence to Le Mont-Pèlerin. 

In no time at all we were in the village, but we weren't quite home and hosed just yet. We headed uphill again and made it to the bottom of 'our' road, where a man was removing snow chains from his wheels on a flat section of tarmac. The road curved around and uphill and we took a bit of a run-up at it, but the tyres couldn't get any traction, so we rolled back and parked the car at the junction, where there was a small car park. Then, laden down with the shopping, we trudged up the hill in the ever-deepening snow to cover the remaining 250 metres to the house.

And so, five hours after we left Dorrie's, we arrived at our new accommodation. Thankfully, the key was where Bronnie said it would be and so was the dog, Bella, a one-year-old schnoodle – beside herself, barking from a small cage downstairs. I let her out and she ran about, barking hysterically at us all, but Kate managed to catch her and give her a cuddle and she eventually calmed down. The three cats – Bramley, a big nine-year-old British shorthair, Mischka, a cream-coloured 14-year-old part-Birman, and Elvis, the youngster at five, just a plain old black cat – arrived one after the other to check out the intruders while we wandered around checking out the house.

It's lovely and very, very large – three storeys, four bedrooms, three bathrooms and an enormous eat-in kitchen with two ovens, two sinks, a central island and more bench space than even I could ever fill (sadly, it has a halogen stove, but it's actually pretty responsive and not too bad to cook on). It also has some pretty spectacular views down to the lake and the mountains that surround it.

Later, the snow plough came through and cleared the road and we were able to bring the car up to the house and unpack properly. And so now, finally, all is well again.