MegèveSki

Transport

So the plan is we rent a place somewhere pretty central, we'll take a car, we drive to where the snow's good. Its funny how complicated the "we'll take a car" bit can get...

The original plan was that we wanted a left hand drive car for France. Since we were planning on spending a lot of time in France and since they drive on the "wrong" side of the road we thought it would be useful (in a 'we'd need to think less' kinda way) to have a car that was right sided for the road system. Of course we needed a 4x4 (even though a lot of the French don't seem to bother). Of course we wanted something chunky, like a Jeep Grand Cherokee...

So we'd rent one, right?

Wrong. Renting such a beast would be around £4500 - £5000 for the period (at normal rates), that didn't include the extra for hiring in London and having the audacity to take it out of the country. It didn't guarantee the type of vehicle and, eventually, we realised that none of the hire companies' long term hire teams were ever going to bother calling us back with a proper quote...

So we could buy?

Hmm, because we can? We could, but, well, no. New would cost too much and lose to much since we only wanted it for 4-5 months. Second hand was a case of judging the age and reliability against the potential depreciation over the time we needed it. Much thought ensued and we eventually found a likely vehicle. The price looked OK, according to the guide books, and the AA report came good but then we faltered. Although the price was good for a RHD vehicle of a certain age in the UK the corresponding LHD specimin should have been cheaper (theoretically) and we couldn't get any idea of what they'd be likely to buy it back for when we were done with it - the spread on the deal was too big without the depreciation and the fact that it was likely to need a 3 year service just before we wanted to sell it again...

The next idea was contract hire. I finally found a place that did 6 month hires and got some prices. Lower than the hire price, guaranteed car, reasonably new, a known cost. It was looking good, but still expensive...

Then Miche's mum offered to swap her Rav 4 for our Puma... Seems like the best deal we'll get :) So that's what we're doing...

Now, snow tires, or chains, or both?