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Snowstorm traps 50 Brits in French Alps gym

AFP
AFP - [email protected]
Snowstorm traps 50 Brits in French Alps gym
The group were among around 15,000 motorists and travellers stranded in France's Savoie region while going to or from ski stations. Photo: Jean Pierre Clatot/AFP

A group of around 50 British holiday makers bitterly complained of inaction on Sunday after being stuck in a French gymnasium for a second night following heavy snowfall in the Alps.

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The group were among around 15,000 motorists and travellers stranded in France's Savoie region while going to or from ski stations.

The tourists, travelling with Britain's Crystal Ski tour operator, slammed the company for failing to get them to their Val Thorens and Val d'Isere ski resort destinations despite their long wait in a gymnasium refuge in the town of Albertville.

Several of them decided to reach their destinations on their own -- by taxi or other private means of travel -- while others rented hotel rooms in Albertville to wait it out.

"We're still stuck in Albertville, where we were put to sleep with excuses for 28 hours," Sarah Stewart, holed up in the gymnasium, said on Twitter.

Another person tweeting as Mountain Maud first used black humour claiming "we are losing the will to live now," before adding that the tour operator's "organisation and management is ridiculous -- they have NO idea what's going on."

A spokeswoman for Crystal Ski told AFP around 1,000 clients had been blocked at the Chambery airport by the storms, but about 500 of them had been taken by bus to Lyon to board planes back to Britain.

Those remaining behind "are waiting to travel to their ski resorts, and should be there this evening now that the roads are open," she said.

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