The Sunday Times September 1, 2019 15

Travel Cover story

at the Refuge du Plan de l’Aiguille,a 10-minute hike below the halfway station. Be quick; it closes at 4pm (£6.50; refuge-plan-aiguille.com).

EveningNobody would object to your retiring to your hotel balcony to drink supermarket rosé as the sunset turns Mont Blanc purple. If you have the energy and the appetite, Chambre Neuf, across from the station, does the town’s best steak-frites with béarnaise (£25; langleyhotels.eu).

If you want to push on, the après-ski bar chain La Folie Douce has recently launched its first hotel, taking over the old Club Med. It doesn’t party as hard as it does in winter, but the beach bar-style deck is the top spot for after-dark Aperol spritzes (see Where to Stay).

SUNDAYMorningAnother day, another country, complete with clanging cow bells. With time tight, make your weekend hike the one up the Tête de Balme mountain, on the Swiss border. Take the No 2 bus to Le Tour, a half-hour ride — your hotel should have supplied you with a carte d’hôte pass that gets you free bus and train rides. Then allow a couple of hours for the uphill hike — or, again, let a pair of lifts (Charamillon and Les Autannes) take the strain. It’ll bea little too early for lunch when you reach the red-shuttered Refuge du Col de Balme, but you’ll order the onion soup (£6.50) and “hiking plate” of meat and cheese (£5.50) anyway.

AfternoonIt’s a short walk to the gentle summit of Tête de Balme, at 7,614ft, with yet another view of Mont Blanc beyond Chamonix ahead of you and, to your right, a giant glacial hanging valley straight out of a GCSE geography textbook: it’s been dammed to form the Emosson reservoir. Allow an hour for the walk back down, swinging west to the top of the Vallorcine cable car. Down in Vallorcine, it’s seven quick stops on the Mont Blanc Express train back into town.

Find relief from the intense mountainsun in the Alpine Museum, whichtraces the history of Chamonix’s mountain-climbing obsession. It all began with local lad Jacques Balmat’s part inthe first ascent of Mont Blanc, in 1786. His alpenstock walking stick/crevasse pokeris on display, as is the à la mode outfit worn by Henriette d’Angeville, the second woman to climb the mountain, in 1838: think Little Bo Peep meets Highlander (from £4.25 with a carte d’hôte pass).

You’ve just time for a swim in the publicbaths (£5.60 with the pass). With indoor and outdoor pools, this is your emergency wet-weather activity, along with the museum. It’s been a scorching summer, but it’s the mountains: you never know.

EveningLa Fine Bouche is the sort of cosy bistro you dream about finding in a little village in the Dordogne, not in one of Europe’s biggest ski resorts. You’ll want the snails and the salad topped with exploding reblochon cheese wrapped in pastry (booking essential; three courses from £27; 00 33 4 50 21 10 63).

For once, Beer O’Clock isn’t awful travel-guide banter. It’s the name of a bar that lets you pour your own pints — or, rather, delicate 250ml measures. Put some cash on one of the bar’s charge cards, then go to bed when it runs out.Or top it up again (drinks from £3.50).

THE BIG WEEKEND

GETTING THEREEasyJet has flights to Geneva, a 75-minute drive away, from 15UK airports. Transfers start at £60 return (mountaindropoffs.com).Book your lift passonline (two days £72; montblancnaturalresort.com).

WHERE TO STAYThe suites at Les Balcons du Savoy sleep up to four and have

kitchens and views of Mont Blanc (from £135; lesbalconsdusavoy.com). La Folie Douce is the hippest new hotel in town. Some rooms are deliberately small, and cost as little as £45 (lafoliedoucehotels.com).

Martin Hemming was a guest of Chamonix (chamonix.com), Les Balcons du Savoy, Le Refuge du Montenvers and easyJet (easyjet.com)

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The name Chamonix probablysets the Ski Sunday themetune running in your head.But from May onwards, thedownhill racers and hardcore

après-skiers are replaced by a significantly more serene crowd of hikers, bikers and paragliders, as well as straightforward sightseers. Come September, numbers calm down and you can have the run of the place. The town is one of function rather than architectural aesthetics, but beauty abounds all around in the form of snow-capped Alps, licked by the tongues of melting ancient glaciers. Buses and trains are free for tourists and the network of cable cars means high-altitude thrills are open to people in Crocs as well as posers in £200 Gore-Tex boots.

SATURDAYMorningSorry to be a stick in the mud, but do swing by the tourist office for relevant maps and timetables. Then look south. That’s Mont Blanc. The highest mountain in the Alps, at nearly 15,780ft, will follow you around all weekend, so make sure you’re pointing at the right peak: the humped one near the back.

It’s a short but steep stroll to the bottomof the Brévent cable car. Pick up yourlift pass, which you booked online (see Getting There), and away you go, up to 8,284ft, for epic vista #1. That’s Mont Blanc again across the valley, with Chamonix now an ant-world below.

You have a choice for the descent:back on the lift, or jump. A 20-minute tandem paraglider flight with Les Ailes du Mont Blanc costs £100. If Sandie Cochepain is the instructor, rest assured: she’s a former world paragliding champion (lesailesdumontblanc.com).

In Chamonix, what comes down mustgo up again, this time to the Mer de Glace glacier, reached by rack-and-pinion railway (covered by your lift pass). The 3,000ft climb takes 20 minutes, after which another cable car drops you down to the mucky-grey glacier itself. Or at least it used to. The glacier is in rapid retreat and metal staircases now take you down past signs marking its previous heights. There’s a fun ice cave to explore, carved out fresh every year, when you finally get down there.

AfternoonLunch is under the shark-teeth peaks of the Aiguilles du Dru, on the terrace atLe Refuge du Montenvers, a Victorian bunkhouse recently made over into a hipster hotel. We ordered the tartiflette (bacon, potatoes, melted reblochon) and the whole melted écorce de sapin cheese. “Cheesy lunch,” the waiter commented, and he wasn’t wrong (mains from £17; refugedumontenvers.com). Then get back on the train.

Now you’re aiming for the weekend’s most spectacular view of Mont Blanc, from just under 3,400ft below its summit. The sprawling Aiguille du Midicable-car station is an incredible featof engineering, first sutured to its mountainside in 1955. It’s a bizarre sensation looking down on serious mountaineers slogging away through snowfields below you.

The two cable cars that get you there from the valley floor do it so fast that under-3s are banned, lest their eardrums explode. Keep an eye on the weather. There’s little point going up if the clouds are rolling in.

Ease yourself back down to earth witha slice of blueberry tart, a local speciality,

Post-crowds, pre-snow, France’s mountainous adventure capital is at its peak, says Martin Hemming

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