We woke up early on Sunday to make the most of our last day of skiing and were surprised to find how busy the lifts were when we got down the hill at 8:45. There was already a line before the lifts had opened at 9, but after storing our bags in our locker and gearing up, we got on just after they opened. We made it up the top of the mountain and to the lift leading to Les Fers just before it opened at 9:30. There was almost no one on those pistes and we had a lovely run down in the morning sunshine. 

It was on the long lift back up to the top when I got a message saying that our flight had been cancelled. We knew that there had been stormy weather heading towards the UK earlier in the weekend but didn’t realise it was bad enough for flights to be cancelled, particularly so late on Sunday night (our flights were for 9pm). We were at an awkward point where we couldn’t stop and deal with it so we decided to make our way down the next run, up the next lift and then find a spot at the restaurant at the top to call British Airways and deal with it. We had a gorgeous smooth run with almost no one else around, which was lucky. When we made it to the top we called BA, only to get stuck on hold. After stopping for a coffee and waiting on hold, Peter told me to go for a couple of runs and come back, which I did, only to come back and find him still on hold. By this stage it was around 10:30-11 and he’d been on hold for an hour. He didn’t want to move though as he was worried about losing signal so it essentially meant we were trapped at the top of the mountain. I went for one last run and when I got back he was packing up and told me that all the flights from Geneva were sold out but he’d got us on to a flight still scheduled to leave from Chambery in France. 

We had an hour to get down the mountain (about half an hour’s lift and ski), return all our gear, and run to the train station for a 12:57 train, as it was then 2 hours of trains to Geneva airport (our original plan, albeit 3 hours earlier) and then an hour’s bus to Chambery from Geneva. We grabbed our gear and had a brilliant run pelting down the mountain as fast as each of us could go without rolling down, and rushed to the ski shop. At this point we discovered Peter had accidentally picked up the wrong skis (they looked exactly the same!) at the restaurant but we couldn’t do anything about it as we had to pay and run to the train station. After speed-walking as fast as our very tired legs could up the steep hill, we made it to the train station two minutes ahead of the train pulling up. Luckily our Sunday train tickets were regular fare tickets so we could use them all day. Despite feeling extremely tense, the train ride down the mountain was absolutely gorgeous, passing through tunnels and emerging to views across the alps and down to Aigle across forests and then grape vines. There was even a castle in the valley at the bottom, which we googled to find that it was a wine museum! We arrived at Aigle train station at 1:32 ahead of a 1:37 train to Geneva and quickly made our way to the platform to wait.  

As the train arrived, we climbed on and found our way to an empty pair of seats. We held our breaths as the conductor checked our tickets and were relieved when the machine gave a positive-sounding ping and he moved on. We were still in all our ski gear as we’d rushed off the mountain so quickly, so at this point we took it in turns going and getting changed in the train toilet. The train was an hour and a half so we were able to relax to an extent and watch a couple more episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale while we watched the lake and mountain scenery out of the corner of our eyes. We pulled in to Geneva at 3 and after a bit of a confused wander through the terminal, were directed by a helpful information person to the coach station. After a quick rush around trying to find the ticket machines (there weren’t any, we eventually just bought tickets online), we found the coach to Chambery and hopped on. Once again it was an hour’s ride to Chambery and we were starting to feel hopeful about making our flight, planning ahead on ordering an Uber from the bus station to get to the airport. We watched some more Handmaid’s Tale and tried to relax. 

We were about 10 minutes out from Chambery when I got a text saying our flight was cancelled. The British airways app confirmed this, and we were once again thrown into the pickle of what to do next. We tried calling British airways but at this point they weren’t even accepting calls, just hanging up after an apology about incoming call levels. At this stage we were fairly stuck, as British airways had sent us to Chambery but there were no more flights out of there - not only tonight, but tomorrow either. It’s obviously not a peak commute destination from London! We figured we’d still go to the airport and go from there, but when we arrived at the ‘bus station’ (a bus stop by the side of a park in a tiny city centre) there were no Uber cars and no taxis anywhere nearby. We looked up at the next busses and there was a bus in 15 minutes to Lyon. A quick scan of Skyscanner flights out of Geneva and Lyon showed an 8am flight tomorrow morning from Lyon so we figured we’d go there and see if we could get on that, as the last evening flight was also cancelled. 

It was another hour on the bus which we mostly spent scanning flight websites. At this point all of the flights tonight were cancelled, and any early flights tomorrow as well. There were lots of 6-9 hour flights with stopovers throughout Europe but we wanted to avoid that. We kept trying to call BA but they continued to avoid any calls. At around 6:15 we arrived at Lyon, both realising how hungry we were, having not eaten since 7:30am. We tried to find a BA stall and only found a line of English-speaking people trying to get back to London. We joined the line and waited, only to find 15 minutes later that it wasn’t a BA stall, just some airport staff trying to help people with their problems. To our frustration, they couldn’t rebook our flight but they did ask if we wanted a hotel for the night. We gave in and said yes, and they gave us some vouchers for food and drinks and told us to come back at 7 for the bus to the hotel. Feeling a bit defeated, Peter relented and used his rewards points to book us onto a 6:30pm flight tomorrow night as that was all that was left and figured he’d just ask BA to refund them when we get onto them later. 

Along with the rest of the cancelled flight passengers, we grabbed some sandwiches, snacks and a drink from the airport shop and then went back to wait for the bus. When it eventually arrived at about 7:10 we were ferried to a hotel around 20 minutes from the airport. It was in a really bizarre location, out in the suburbs but in a little group of hotels obviously designed for exactly this purpose - I don’t know who else but stranded passengers would be the demographic! There were three hotels, a Belgian restaurant and a bar, and we were dropped off out the front as the gate wasn’t wide enough for the bus. We quickly walked to the hotel so we weren’t too far back in the queue for checkin and were given the key to our room. When we got upstairs we found a basic but nice hotel room and were glad for a toilet and somewhere to sleep. Once we’d dropped our bags we made our way back downstairs, heading to the Belgian restaurant intending a wine. Unfortunately they had a ‘minimum three tapas each’ rule and we weren’t hungry so we bailed (much to the waitress’ horror) and went to the bar next door. We got a house ‘pot’ (half bottle) of Côtes du Rhône red, which was really nice for how cheap it was! After a couple of glasses of wine and a chat about plans for tomorrow we headed back and went to bed.