It's a shame that the individual chalets are disappearing, making way for large and luxurious flats that are occupied for a couple of weeks in the year but I suppose this is the problem of ski resorts that are in high demand for four or five months of the year and then die quietly during the remaining months. Verbier of course is a well-known resort and the skiing is excellent - 40% of foreign investors here are English, and one supposes that a high percentage of those are the hated City Bonus benificiaries. However...
I love Verbier once the season ends as everything is shut and no one is around apart from the locals who come out of hiding! The negative side is that as soon as the season is at an end, the building work starts again in ernest. No lorries, cranes, Manitous and dynamite during the winter as there is too much traffic already in the village, it isn't good publicity, and I suppose there are the technical problems with the snow, the cold etc. reacting with concrete ... the work stops again during July and August during the Festival, so in fact if you decide to come here in the winter or the summer, you would never know any building work went on at all. Last summer high up on the mountainside looking down over Verbier, I counted 33 cranes!
Anway back to the chalet over the road. Here are a series of photos that I took, starting on Monday...
MONDAY MORNING - FIR TREES IN THE GARDEN LINING THE ROAD
MONDAY AFTERNOON - FIR TREES GONE
TUESDAY MORNING - ROOF SLATES BEING TAKEN OFF
WEDNESDAY MORNING - ROOF READY TO BE DISMANTLED
THURSDAY - FIRST FLOOR COMING OFF
FRIDAY MORNING - DOWN TO GROUND FLOOR
Just a week to dismantle a chalet and cut down trees that were probably 40 years old...
6 comments:
Louise This happens all the time in France. English people move in, get the fish fryer on the go, burn the curry, laze about half naked with outsize bellies. Before you know it the neighbours move the house.
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That's too bad, Louise.
'They paved paradise
and put up a parking lot.'
Joni Mitchell got it right - so often folk really don't know what they've got till it's gone.
And I hope your own personal piece of paradise won't be spoiled.
I see you have forsaken your old blog for the new gizmo on the Telegraph.
One shouldn't be systematically anti the new English gadgets but experience shows that they are usually tripe.
No, I haven't given up my blog. I went to the Telly as a guinea pig testing the site before it went on the air. Amusing and quite instructive. It has now been online for 48 hours and I shall hopefully go back to my nice dark blue blog very soon. Things on the Telly are rather hectic as there is rather a lot of chaff flying around but that will disappear soon I think. As Colin B did this morning...again.
I'd mind about the trees and the chalet..
My neighbour's an example. He chopped down 60 trees on his land before building the most mediocre house ever. We heard he'd been heavily fined but as the trees were pines ("cochonnerie") no one seems to care. He's French.
Our local Mairie is fairly strict about planning permissions normally and I'm surprised the Swiss let this happen, given their reputation as being sticklers for quality.
Angela
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