Skiing 2026 - A Summary - Taking the Long Way Home %

As always I am sharing our costs. Mostly because I like slicing and dicing numbers. Maybe you’ll find this interesting or useful.

Trip Summary

We set off from home on 1st February to make our way to Dover for our ferry on 2nd. Unfortunately we had a breakdown on the way. A bit of a shock for a one year old van. After a few days of grumpiness and making way too many phone calls the issues were resolved and we were back on our way, catching the ferry on 6th Feb.

We knew we would focus our journey on the Aosta Valley as usual, but we did include a few new stops.

Our first stop was one of those new places – Praz de Lys Sommand. We really enjoyed this small French resort which is on the route to the Portes de Soleil. While we were there we had our first significant snowfall and used the snow chains for the first and only time during the trip.

After Praz de Lys we moved onto Saint Gervais, somewhere we’ve been before, but as it was earlier in the season this time we were able to enjoy the area to it’s fullest without worrying too much about closed runs and slush.

While we were in Saint Gervais the French school holidays started and it became very evident with more families in the town. We moved through the Mont Blanc tunnel and drove up to La Thuile where we hoped it would be quieter. Unfortunately another large snowfall was forecast and the sosta was closed after we’d stayed just one night.

From a few conversations we realised that it was going to be a perfect storm of holidays, not only British and French school holidays, but also ‘carnevale’ – when a lot of Italians also take holidays. We decided to stay in the lower valley for the week and avoid the ski resorts. The weather was glorious and we managed some lovely hikes well away from the crowds.

We then headed up towards Cervinia. We spent a day skiing in Chamois – which was new to us – before a few days in Valtournenche and Cervinia. We were sad, but not surprised, to see the Cervinia sosta halved in size with construction taking place on the site.

We popped back to Torgnon, where we enjoyed slopeside parking, before heading to Pila and admiring the new gondola and the Stella di Pila. All of this time we enjoyed blue skies and glorious weather.

We moved on into the Monterosa area where we drove up the Lys valley. Paul was resting his knee at this point but I managed a couple of runs around the pretty villages and a lonely ski in the smallest ski resort of our trip – Weissmatten. We then drove up to Staffal at the head of the valley where we had a couple of days skiing Monterosa. The weather had changed and we had fog and snow, but our skiing had improved enough that we managed to make the most of it.

We ventured back to Cervinia where we had further snowfall and stuck around to enjoy it by snowshoe and ski before heading back to France.

In France we revisited an old favourite – Les Saisies – where Camping Car Parks have taken over both of the aires, one of which seems very expensive. We have definitely found ourselves using more of the CCP aires this trip.

Our final destination was La Plagne – which came as a bit of a surprise to Paul who had confused it with Montgenevre. We have skied La Plagne before but this was the first time we made it into the excellently located aire.

Then we made our way home via a few towns and cities, which reminded us that sightseeing is not our favourite part of travelling and doing it several days in a row is not a good idea.

Total Spend – £5300.34

Our spend covers 8 weeks and a day (57 nights) from 1st February to 30th March. Making it an average of £92.99 per night. That is more per day than we spent last year. The main reason for that is that our big costs (skiing and ferries) were about the same as last year but divided between fewer days.

We ended up spending our first 4 nights in the UK, 3 of them back at home, due to our breakdown. However we’ve included our costs over that time in our total spend. Luckily our hire car costs were eventually reimbursed by Allianz who agreed we should have been offered a way to return to our van in Basingstoke, but we still had to pay for fuel to travel from Basingstoke to Exmouth and back again. £33.50 wasn’t too much to pay for these journeys. It was before the war with Iran so fuel costs hadn’t risen.

Skiing – £2065.94

We spent 23 days skiing (22 days for Paul) in 10 resorts, using a combination of whole day, 4 hour and half day passes. That works out as an average cost of £89.82 per day, £44.91 per ski pass.

Our most expensive ski pass was La Plagne where the day passes are very expensive at £64.66 each (season passes are a lot cheaper and weekend day passes are very good value).

Our (or, more accurately, Becky’s) cheapest ski was Weissmatten at £19.58 for a half day ski.

We skied in 10 resorts (or 11 if you consider Valtournenche to be a separate ski resort). You can follow the links below for more info about our time in these resorts.

Groceries – £823.27

At £14.44 per day this worked out a little less than last year. We have a few meal options now that are cheaper, including pasta, a food that Paul previously wouldn’t touch with a barge pole. We ate a lot of cheese but less meat.

Fuel – £823.26

Fuel obviously makes a large part of the costs of any trip. Our fuel costs include fuel for the motorhome (£780.79, some of which is also used for our heating), a small amount of fuel for the generator (£8.97) and fuel for our hire car after our breakdown (£33.50). This year, the war in Iran made a big difference to our fuel costs for the return journey.

We took a generator with us for the first time, generously loaned by a friend (thanks Mark). We haven’t updated our electrical system yet and we were concerned about our ability to cope in cold weather. We ended up needing to use it a few times, particularly in Cervinia when we were in a sosta without EHU and we had a heavy fall of snow. I did enjoy being able to turn the electric blanket on while it was running. We’re looking forward to updating our electrical system this year.

Overnight Stays – £535.09

Our overnight costs averaged at £9.39 per night. Which is cheaper than last year. Even if we consider that 3 nights were at home (hence free, sort of), it was still a good average.

41 of our nights were paid, the remaining 16 were free. We mostly stayed in formal camper stops but some of them were free due to it being out of season. We only spent a handful of nights in unofficial car parks, we prefer to be somewhere we know we are welcome. Our average cost for the paid stops was £13.05 per night.

Our most expensive overnight location was in Les Saisies at the expensive Tetras aire which is run by Camping Car Parks and cost us £27.22 per night. Our cheapest paid overnight location was in Saint Gervais where we only had to pay for the services (£1.74) and not for the parking.

Tolls – £299.78

We used tolls on the way to the alps (£116.56), in a rush because of our delayed departure, and some tolls on the way home due to snow (£54.61). The total also includes the cost of the Mont Blanc tunnel in both directions (£128.61).

Ferries – £256.80

We used ferries on the Dover to Calais crossing. We have considered other crossings but this is the cheapest option for us. These figures include a £20 amendment fee when we needed to change our ferry. This was handled by the C&MC who were very good, rearranging our ferry even though it had already departed by the time we got through to them.

Mobile – £188.13

This is the cost of additional mobile data over and above our super cheap UK contracts. Even though I wasn’t working this year we still used a lot of data. A lot of it on watching rugby. But also because we’re internet junkies. We used a combination of Popit in our motorhome mifi and Saily e-sim.

At the end of the trip we managed to get Paul an EE unlimited contract for a discounted £35.99 a month. This should allow us unlimited roaming data and it gives us TNT sports. The overall cost should work out about the same as we’re paid on roaming data in the last 12 months and the addition of TNT sports is a bit of a treat. We’re still trying to avoid using Starlink. We’ll see how it goes.

Eating Out – £138.52

Reducing our eating out costs is one of the ways we keep our costs down. It works for us as we enjoy cooking. We had a few lunches, drinks, cakes and take-aways.

Laundry – £72.18

Including one failed laundry attempt. Now we have a smaller van we spend a little more on laundry rather than taking a lot of bedding and towels and bringing the used laundry home with us.

Travel Insurance – £61.98

We have travel insurance with our Nationwide FlexPlus bank account (which also includes breakdown recovery). This is the cost of extending that insurance to cover a trip of over 31 days. The number of days of winter sports covered is still limited to 31 days, which is plenty for us as we don’t ski every day.

Gas – £16.56

We have one refillable bottle which we topped up twice. Having a diesel heater really helps to conserve the gas which is used for hot water, fridge and cooking. We only heat hot water when we need it rather than keeping it on constantly and often have a flannel wash using a kettle of hot water rather than a shower.

Since going through menopause I find I only need to wash my hair about once a week which certainly saves water and gas. Paul doesnt have enough hair to worry about.

Other

We also had small parking and public transport costs.

Skiing 2026 – A Summary