Oldgreytravel has recently returned from skiing in Bardonecchia, surely one of the quietest ski resorts in the Alps. Tucked just inside the Italian border with France, it has around 100 km of piste over two main ski areas. Bardonecchia had its moment in the sun when it was host to the snowboarding at the 2006 Winter Olympics, but has long been overshadowed by the nearby Milky Way resorts of Sauze d’Oulx and Sestriere. It has now subsided back to relative tranquility as a local base for Turin cognoscenti and a centre for Italian school ski holidays.
My recent trip at the beginning of February was blessed with perfect snow and weather, but the fact that most stood out was that there was nobody there! As soon as we left the ski school groups behind, we encountered perfectly groomed empty slopes. The worst queuing amounted to waiting for the person in front of you to get on the lift. The secondary mountain at Jafferau could not have had more than 100 skiers on it at any one time during our stay. For those intermediate skiers fed up with looking over their shoulder, this was heaven.
Its relatively low altitude and the proximity of the bigger resorts nearby (15 minutes by taxi) mean that it has been largely overlooked by British skiers. Some British ski tour operators do feature Bardonecchia in their brochures, but this has all the hallmarks of a resort the Italians want to keep to themselves. The skiing is nearly all intermediate level, reds and steep blues, which keeps the novice ski school students confined to a small area of gentle blue slopes near the main lift.
There is little in the way of apres ski, though there are one or two attractive bars in the town (this is a sizeable place, not a village) and a busy, even raucous bar at the bottom of the slopes. Prices are very reasonable with delicious pasta meals in the mountain restaurants coming in around 10 euro, drinks around 4-5 euro and coffee 1-3 euro.
There is a good range of budget accommodation in the town, but we stayed in the Villagi Olimpico, which must be one of the truly great ski bargains in Europe. The complex is huge, it is the only place I have been handed a map of the hotel at reception, and was converted from some unspecified use for the centre for snowboarders at the 2006 Olympics. The rooms are spectacularly large and well furnished, there are bars, a nightclub, swimming pool, gym, spa, games rooms and a four course buffet dinner with free wine, all at a half board rate, including ski pass, of 80 euro a night! Of course there is a catch. This is the base for those myriad Italian school children you see at ski school, so you will find yourself sharing the hotel with around 400 schoolchildren, parents and teachers, plus the occasional Italian family. If you can get you head around this, you will be able to enjoy one of the biggest bargains in skiing. I also have to say it was a unique experience for us and the implausibility of two mature British skiers among this Italian juvenile mayhem was not lost on the staff, who looked after us admirably.
Bardonecchia is easily reached, being just off the main autostrada to Turin and on the main Paris-Turin-Milan tgv route. The station is in the centre of the town and we were able to transfer to our hotel by foot, another first. Alternatively, you could fly to Turin and take the train or bus to Bardonecchia from there.
Does it ever get busy? Well, we were there mid-week and outside the school holiday period, so it must get busier at those times, but if you have the flexibility of a mid-week ski break, then you are unlikely to be disturbed on the piste by much more than your own shadow.
