New Beginnings

Hello my little mountain lions, and welcome to my first ever blog!

For those of you that don’t know me, my name’s Cassie (Cassandra Faye West, nee Brown) and I’m a little idiot; born in Amsterdam, raised on Hayling Island and currently residing in the beautiful Chalet Bernadine, located in Saint Jean D’Aulps in the Rhone Alps with fellow little idiot, Simon West.

Over the past 12 months, our lives have changed dramatically, by choice I’m happy to say. Some may think the changes are unwise or a little hasty, but the dreams that most of us have, only wait around for so long for you to dare them to be reality. It seems to me that more and more people are taking the initiative to start a new business, new job, take on development projects – exciting times.

Simon and I spent many months apart each year due to work commitments, and the time we had together was marred by long work hours, and work stresses. A couple of years ago the scales tipped and the scary life change became a less scary prospect than simply living for the weekends in an unchanging stressful life in an overcrowded city. We have a short time to enjoy these lives so we decided to stop putting this off – our dream was to retire to the mountains and live active lives summer and winter, and so plans were made for an early retirement!  

Sunny days by the lake, off piste skiing through breath-taking mountain passes, incredible rolling thunderstorms that reverberate of the mountains around you, a landscape that changes practically by the hour… I can tell you that this part of the world is so captivating that it convinced me (a risk adverse catastrophist) to leave a well-paid, salaried job, sell up and move here to start a new Chalet business ‘Alpine Action Adventures’.

I decided to start this blog for 3 reasons:

1. To promote mountain life and share the beauty and adventures of the area with anyone that is interested

2. To keep me sane – using the page as my company during any weeks of solitude in the future

3. Memories are limited, so having a catalogue of musings will keep Mr Alpine Action Adventures and myself honest about our experiences in years to come, or will at least be an aid to solving arguments when our memories fail us.

Hopefully you will enjoy my posts – I certainly welcome comments, opinions and shared experiences. And if you fancy a bigger slice of our world then you can find us on Facebook or contact me cassie@alpineactionadventures.co.uk

Thanks for visiting,
Cassie

Chalet Bernadine, our home in St Jean D'Aulps near Morzine