Our good friends Ollie and Raphaelle were visiting the Cote d’Azur this weekend. As always, they were staying at Ollie’s parents place in “the most beautiful village in France”, Greolieres. The plan was obviously to meet up. As we usually do when Ollie and Rapha are over, we were planning to do a night out in Greo, followed by a day of skiing. This time, however, the weather forecast for the weekend looked rather grim, so we were already preparing alternative plans. But thankfully, during Friday afternoon, the weather forecast drastically improved for Saturday, so we decided to stick to the original plan, so up we drove along Le Loup towards the mountains on Friday evening.
Things kicked off with an aperitif at Ollie’s parents’ impressive house. His globetrotting parents were there as well (at the moment they live in China), as well as Marc (a friend of Ollie’s, a real local stalwart, whom I met during my last visit to Greolieres). After a couple of glasses of bubbly, we headed down to the best restaurant in Greolieres (not to mention the only one…). The welcome and food was great, as always. You really get a sense of community at this place; pretty much everybody seems to know each other. Except for the large party of hang-gliding Swedes at the table next to us, they kind of stood out from the crowd. As you may or (more likely) may not know, Greolieres is apparently one of the best places in Europe for hang-gliding. The location of the village, I suppose, sat in the imposing Gorges de Loup, helps…
After a very tasty and entertaining meal (which we finished with some grappa and eau de vie, of course!), the lads decided to head on to the local put “Le Relais”, for a couple of drinks more. Hmm, quite a few, as it turned out. The bar was frequented by a rather strange mixture of folks that night; in addition to our party there were a few of the hang-gliding Swedes, a few local stalwarts (at least one of who by the looks of things spends quite a lot of time at Le Relais), as well as an American who splits his time between Greolieres and Basingstoke (of all places – that’s just down the road from where I used to work in the UK!). It was a blast; I ended up finishing the night with the Swedes, and learning much about hang-gliding no doubt (it was all wiped out of memory by the next morning)…
In spite of feeling somewhat worse for wear, I amazingly managed to get out of bed at a reasonably early hour, and we managed to hit the ski slopes more or less on schedule. The weather was great for skiing, with sunshine and a blue sky, but it does have to be said the ski slopes were in worse shape than last time me and Mathilde came (two weekends ago). It was all a bit icy and slippery. But what was great was the fact that hardly anybody was there, so we pretty much had the slopes to ourselves. And the slopes got a bit softer and easier later on during the day… After a “light” lunch (tartiflette & beer), we carried on in the afternoon – but were somewhat less motivated due to the blistering wind that made even staying upright a downright challenge. So we decided to call it a day relatively early. After a coffee at Marc’s place (who lives in Greolieres-les-Neiges), we said our tearful goodbyes, and hit the road.
Our good friends Ollie and Raphaelle were visiting the Cote d’Azur this weekend. As always, they were staying at Ollie’s parents place in “the most beautiful village in France”, Greolieres. The plan was obviously to meet up. As we usually do when Ollie and Rapha are over, we were planning to do a night out in Greo, followed by a day of skiing. This time, however, the weather forecast for the weekend looked rather grim, so we were already preparing alternative plans. But thankfully, during Friday afternoon, the weather forecast drastically improved for Saturday, so we decided to stick to the original plan, so up we drove along Le Loup towards the mountains on Friday evening. 
Things kicked off with an aperitif at Ollie’s parents’ impressive house. His globetrotting parents were there as well (at the moment they live in China), as well as Marc (a friend of Ollie’s, a real local stalwart, whom I met during my last visit to Greolieres). After a couple of glasses of bubbly, we headed down to the best restaurant in Greolieres (not to mention the only one…). The welcome and food was great, as always. You really get a sense of community at this place; pretty much everybody seems to know each other. Except for the large party of hang-gliding Swedes at the table next to us, they kind of stood out from the crowd. As you may or (more likely) may not know, Greolieres is apparently one of the best places in Europe for hang-gliding. The location of the village, I suppose, sat in the imposing Gorges de Loup, helps…
After a very tasty and entertaining meal (which we finished with some grappa and eau de vie, of course!), the lads decided to head on to the local put “Le Relais”, for a couple of drinks more. Hmm, quite a few, as it turned out. The bar was frequented by a rather strange mixture of folks that night; in addition to our party there were a few of the hang-gliding Swedes, a few local stalwarts (at least one of who by the looks of things spends quite a lot of time at Le Relais), as well as an American who splits his time between Greolieres and Basingstoke (of all places – that’s just down the road from where I used to work in the UK!). It was a blast; I ended up finishing the night with the Swedes, and learning much about hang-gliding no doubt (it was all wiped out of memory by the next morning)…
In spite of feeling somewhat worse for wear, I amazingly managed to get out of bed at a reasonably early hour, and we managed to hit the ski slopes more or less on schedule. The weather was great for skiing, with sunshine and a blue sky, but it does have to be said the ski slopes were in worse shape than last time me and Mathilde came (two weekends ago). It was all a bit icy and slippery. But what was great was the fact that hardly anybody was there, so we pretty much had the slopes to ourselves. And the slopes got a bit softer and easier later on during the day… After a “light” lunch (tartiflette & beer), we carried on in the afternoon – but were somewhat less motivated due to the blistering wind that made even staying upright a downright challenge. So we decided to call it a day relatively early. After a coffee at Marc’s place (who lives in Greolieres-les-Neiges), we said our tearful goodbyes, and hit the road.
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