For those who are new to Chalet Russell - we are Jack and Kathy, we have been living in St Jean D' Aulps in the Portes Du Soleil region of the northern French alps for 4 yrs now and for that time have been providing catered chalet accommodation, property management and driver training services to many satified clients 

We moved to St Jean in May 2005 after Jack 'retired' having served 30 yrs in the UK police force, during which time he served mainly in North Yorkshire and undertook roles including Under water search and latterly being a member of the Road Policing group

I, trained as a primary school teacher, and having decided to make a base in York followed a varied path of employment - working for a long period in retail management and latterly for NYP as a civilian in their control centre at York

When Jack retired in 2005 we took the decision to leave behind all that was comfortable and familiar and make a new life for us and our two cocker spaniels Guiness and Tali in a small little heard of village in France

With little experience outside our formal training we bought 'Le Petit Kinkin' and transformed it in to a small (8 person) catered ski chalet - drawing on our strengths as great host and formidable cook!!! we have run the chalet sucessfully to date

Soon after arriving here though two things became clear - firstly while running a catered chalet was a lot of fun it was also very hard work and  not hugely profitable, secondly we discovered that there were many opportunities available that we were not aware exsisted and actully made use of the skills we had from our 'professional' lives

In 2006 we discovered the property management market and took on our first chalets to manage - with word of mouth this has now grown into a significant part of our business - one which we are keen to develop further over the coming years

After requests from one of the largest transfer companies in the Alps Jack became involved in a little driver training and as they say from small acorns .. great things grow as with the property management this side of things is proving to be a growth market...

At the start of 2009 we decided that we would quite like to move and concentrate on aspects of the buisness other than the chalet - we put Le Petit Kinkin on the market on made an offer to buy a piece of land  ... we are currently awaiting both a purchaser for our property and a resolution of issues surrounding the land

At present we continuing to provide flexible accommodation within our chalet le Petit Kinkin for winter 2009/10 - we now have limited availabilty for SELF CATERED stays until end of Feb 2010

Meanwhile Jack looks forward to starting his new role as Professional Standards officer for Alp Line ...

Watch this space ... anything could and probably will happen!