EDIT: This is no longer the case – please check out the later post “Accompanied Riding is Back“!
You may or may not know that a guide was arrested last week for guiding without the proper French qualifications. Gareth from Endless ride was charged for this offence and has since been forced to withdraw their accompanied riding services. Gareth is a highly qualified guide, more so than anyone here at Flow or any other company here in Morzine (that I am aware of – we hold the SMBLA Mountain Bike Leader award). Since he was arrested, we also feel that we have no choice but to suspend our accompanied riding services. We will, however, be employing the services of a fully French qualified guide for our guests to use for up to two days of their stay with us. It’s obviously not ideal for us or our guests, but neither is the threat of arrest and possible imprisonment.
I posted the following onto the Singletrack World forum earlier which explains the situation, and endless ride have updated their website with news of the arrest and their take on it – take a look at the “Accompanied Riding Service” section here: http://www.endlessride.com/php/service.php
Here’s my post on STW from this thread.
Thought I’d add something here – being as I run Flowmtb…
The guiding qualifications they need you to have to guide out here are basically hiking qualifications with a bit of VTT tacked on. Basically a higher qualification than the SMBLA in terms of mountain awareness etc, but far less MTB specific. It’s similar to the UK’s Mountain Leader award, but more so.
At flow we hold the SMBLA awards but have always been aware that we can’t legally guide out here according to the French authorities, but perhaps legally according to the EU.
The unfortunate thing is that the SMBLA qualification is not a professional qualification. You don’t need any qualifications in the UK to take people (not kids) out in the hills, you might not get insurance, but you can do what you like. This might be the trump card that the French use to get round the EU law – we’ll have to wait and see.
Since Gareth was arrested we also feel that we can no longer ride with our guests for fear of the same fate. We (along with Endless Ride) have stated on our websites that the accompanied riding services that we offer may be withdrawn if the French force us to do so. This has happened now unfortunately.
However, we are now (and I believe Endless ride are also – but don’t quote me on that..) going to have 1 or 2 days of guiding supplied by a fully French qualified guide for our guests during the early part of their holidays, so that they can get a feel for the place. We will then be doing as much as we can to direct guests to the good stuff or meeting up over the border in Switzerland for some rides over there. Its obviously not ideal and is going to cost us a fair bit of cash to supply the local guides, but there we go. What this arrest has basically done is actually reduced our guests safety on the mountain, and could potentially damage the economy of Morzine as you people decide to ride elsewhere where the guides are accepted.
Hopefully this arrest and subsequent court case will be a catalyst for change and SMBLA qualifications to be recognised, but it’s not going to happen overnight, or even this season.
As far as us Brits setting up in France and delivering holidays to the UK market pissing the French off, I can only say that we are not taking money away from the locals, we are not stealing business, we are adding to the local economy. We pay our taxes here, and our guests spend their money here. There’s no French owned companies (that I know of) that deliver what the likes of us or Endless ride do. The French don’t do these sorts of holidays either as clients or businesses. It’s a British thing. If the Brits weren’t here, there would be far less money in this resort in both summer and winter.
As far as the guiding ‘ban’ goes – it is France wide and has always been, it just depends on the local department for sport to enforce it – unfortunately for us and you lot who visit Morzine, it’s being enforced here.
I’m now in the stupid situation of having to take out old photos of me and my mates when they come and visit, just to prove that I’m not acting as a paid guide!
