Planning and Re-planning

18/02/2026

We made a little plan before we left Pre Saint Didier. It wasnt complex, just a drive to Aosta and skiing in Pila. But even a simple plan can go awry.

Laundry frustrations

As it was a miserable wet day we decided it was time for our first laundry load of the trip. I found two possible laundry options in Aosta and opted to avoid the one in the big shopping centre and go for the smaller one on the south side of the river. The sat nav took us along an interesting country road to get there, it was a good job we had time on our hands as it involved lots of slowing down for oncoming traffic. When we looked closer at the map we could have got there just as easily along the ‘main’ SS26, but why would we do that?

The laundry cost a lot more than expected. Firstly I needed to make some change as it was coin operated. The change machine happily took my €20 note and then gave me €18 change with no hint of an apology. Then I set up the first wash and couldn’t get the machine working, there was no option to return my credit or move it onto a different machine, but it would let me add it to a laundry card. So I tried that, the machine whirred and whirred but no card was dispensed. I nearly gave up at that point, but surely something had to work, so instead I threw more coins into the machine and actually got a different machine working. I have sent an email to see if I can get any money back, but as we’re only €8 out of pocket it’s about the principal rather than the money.

Afternoon in Aosta

With a clean and dry load of laundry we drove to Aosta where we parked up in the city sosta which was remarkably quiet. When we were here just before Christmas in 2023 we were lucky to get a spot, but here we were with only a handful of other vans despite it being holiday season.

Aosta is a lovely city to walk around with it’s Roman ruins, so off went out for a wander with a bit of window shopping thrown in.

The Praetorian Gate – one of the original roman gates in Aosta.

The sosta here is a bit noisy, it’s near a busy road for starters, and at the moment there is quite a lot of construction going on in the locality. When the alarm went off the next day I was not in the mood to get up, my early morning had already been disturbed. By the time I finally made my way out of bed and had a fortifying cup of tea it was already 9am. We decided to drive straight over to the gondola car park to have breakfast before going up to ski. As we made to turn into the car park we saw a fence across the entrance, manned by a parking attendant who shook his head. The parking was full.

We continued around the roundabout and back to the sosta to decide what to do. Given how busy the car park was we agreed it was probably very busy in the ski area so we’d come back another time. We also decided that maybe it was just too busy and we should give skiing a miss for the rest of the week. It was time to re-plan.

Deja-vu in Fenis

Our revised plan was pretty simple. Avoid skiing for the rest of the week. The Italian, British and French holidays had all coincided and combined with tricky snow conditions; too much snow, avalanche warnings and strong winds. It meant that any areas that were open would be very busy. So instead we would spend the rest of the week hiking and sightseeing.

Fenis is another town in the main Aosta valley with a welcoming sosta by a recreational and sports centre. The sosta was open for parking although all the services were off. The barrier was up and there was no parking charge. A small bonus after our laundry over-spend.

Fenis motorhome parking

Arriving in Fenis and walking down to the river I got an immediate sense of deja-vu. The cemetery walls, the car park and noticeboard. We had been here before. The sosta by the sports and recreational centre didn’t exist back then. The castle was here though, it’s a very impressive building that was built as a status symbol rather than for defence. It was restored in the 19th century after falling into disrepair. We must book ourselves on a tour one day.

Walk by the river

Last time we were here we’d cycled west along the cycle track which was so new they were still building bits of it. This time we don’t have our bikes with us so we had a lovely walk along the river, starting on the bike track but then moving onto the fisherman’s path, past vineyards and accompanied by the clanking of diggers filling truck loads of gravel from the river bed. A 10k stroll on fairly flat ground apart from a small climb back up to the village. There were lots of small vineyards alongside the river. Vines wouldn’t thrive on the north facing slopes of Fenis, but evidently the valley bottom gets enough sun to make it worth the effort.

We had a lovely quiet night’s sleep until the 6am “get your arse out of bed” bells started. At 7am a more insistent peal of “you really should be up now” bells roused us briefly but they didn’t shift us. We were too busy snoozing, making up for our broken sleep in Aosta.

Santuario di Plout

Once we’d emerged from our beds we decided to take on a slightly more challenging walk we’d seen on a noticeboard in Fenis on our way back the day before. It had provided a selection of options and we opted for number 3, a 10k hike up the hills on the south side of Fenis to the Santuario di Plout and then a return down a historic mule track back to our start point.

The route was sporadically marked, whether with a pink number 3 sticker, or with the more traditional yellow signposts. The notice board had provided a route based on a photo of the hills so we had to puzzle out how that translated onto the topographical map we were using for hiking  Mostly it made sense, and although it didn’t quite seem right on the way down we made our own route back using our maps.

We’d never seen so many sweet chestnut burrs (botanically known as ‘cupules’, a new word for us) on the ground as we walked up through the trees. The copper leaves and the sunlight filtering through the branches gave the forest a lovely warm glow even when we started to encounter snow and ice on the path.

At the top of the walk, at Plout, stands a church and complex of associated buildings. Originally a bricklayer built and dedicated a church to the Madonna after his broken leg was miraculously healed. The site was then extended in the 19th century due to it’s popularity. It looked quite impressive from the outside but wasn’t open for a closer inspection.