Doddy's Vlog | Pass'Portes Du Soleil 2026

A bit of a vlog for you today. I'm out here in Port de Soleil. Passports 2026. Nothing beats stuff like this for me. So let's give you a little bit of information on Passports de Soleil. What is that event? So essentially it's the opening celebration of the summer season in the Port de Soleil region and each year a different town hosts the event. We're here in Avoraz this year. Last year it was in Les Gets. Before that it was down in I think Chateau and before that it would have been Morzine. Now the idea is you circumnavigate all of the towns and back to where you started from. So there's 10 different towns you can start from. I'm here in Avoraz. I'm going to take you with me on my ride. We're doing that tomorrow with a couple of friends. Now amongst this you've got chairlift access between all the towns. There's food stops everywhere. You've got trails and you can also venture off slightly if you fancy doing something a bit more adventurous. Super easy to follow around and just take in the amazing scenery. It's such a great thing to do and I completely recommend anyone to do it especially if you've not been out here before. It's the perfect way to find where you would like to go for your summer mountain bike holiday because you get a little bit of a sampler of all of those resorts and you're riding two countries as well. You're riding Switzerland and in France. It's absolutely brilliant. Now we're also hosting some booth parties. I'll be spinning some tunes a bit later on. So we're just going to get into a bit more of a vlog style feel now. I've told you what it's about and what's going on. So let's get going. All right, bright and early on the Saturday, ready to do power sports. I've got my number boards here for the guys that are doing it with me. So one of these guys is someone I've, in fact, I've known about for a long time. One of them, I did the event in I think 2014 with him and he hasn't been out here since. The other guy has never been out to ride these resorts, but probably the dude behind there. He's well familiar with that because he's a snowboarder. So just being out here, I think he's pretty surprised with everything. All right. Passport's 2026. Just rolling down the start. Is there any better way to wake up than sitting on a chair? Lift, obviously. It's just amazing. So relaxing. There's definitely some better ones than this. We're only going up over Les Gets at the moment, but it's just last year. It's 20 past nine in the morning. Not even had breakfast or coffee yet, but you just feel wide awake, enjoying life. I have to say now, there's a bit of a story behind it. 11 years ago, I came clattering down there, some walkers coming up it. I've been a nice guy. Instead of spraying them full of rocks, like my friends told me I should have done, I binned it, broke my brake levers off and ended up having 17 stitches. Cost me 400 euros. Hunt tripped it. Okay. Here we are in Les Gets. So I started in Avoires, bombed it down into Morzine, up on the Plenny, into Les Gets. Now we're going up on Chavannes and then back towards Morzine again, and then over to Lindoray. We're going to have a stop there because there's some pretty funny entertainment there. French bands, accordions, might have a cheeky beer. Okay. So let's deal with a few questions about riding out here in this Port de Soleil region. So the first one is, what sort of bike do you need? In truth, most mountain bikes are pretty good for most things these days. You see people out here on hardtails and on all sorts, but a trail bike is your best bet to be able to actually go and pedal, have a good ride, not be too over-biked, but can still take on the bike parks, the rougher stuff, and the big stuff out there. So a 150, 160 bike is great. Can you put an e-bike on a chairlift? Yeah, you can. There's one right behind me. That's actually my bike, but I'm not riding it. My mate's riding this one. So that is my level. That's about as heavy and as big as you get. No problem whatsoever. So always keep your lift pass in your left pocket or in your left hip pocket on your bag. Make sure you lean your bike up before you go through the gates. The turnstile will beep and let you through. Then pay attention to what style lift it is. More often than not, you're going to need to put your bike up on the back wheel and wait at a little turnstile or a gate like this one. Wait till it opens and move forwards quickly. You're in a bit of a hurry here. Hook your bike in. If you've got any problem, the lifty will help you. Step back, go up to the line there and wait for your lift to scoop you up. Passport to Solo has been going since 2004. It covers 12 towns. It's nearly 80 kilometers, sometimes a little bit more depending on your route of almost entirely descending and traversing. So yeah, there's a few little punchy climbs, but really that's about it. It's a brilliant day out. Day out on the bikes. Nice mug face. Cheers boys. It is a good random stat I got from the press pack. How many tons of cheese do you reckon? The abundance cheese. The abundance cheese. Since 2004. I mean, this is cheese. It's like, I mean, you've got to be, for all the riders over the years, you've got to be, it's got to be a ton, a ton or two of cheese. Seven tons. Seven tons of cheese. I've been coming to this region, like Luget, Morzine, all these amazing towns since I was, I don't know, like early twenties. I'm going to be 47 this year and it still feels just as exciting every time. Such a great race here. I mean, I love it, but if I had a bell around my neck, I probably wouldn't love it quite as much. Tell us a little bit about your, your experience with coming to these places and never seeing any of what we're seeing now. So this is my first time in the, in this region, Port Soleil, in the summer. And I'm used to, I'm used to coming here in the winter. So back to back ski holidays with the family and friends and things. And the difference is night and day. Everything is so green. There's flowers everywhere. For example, this right in front of us, the hill we're coming up on, it's a piste. It's that wide and it's all white. There's white all over the trees. It's insane, the difference. So I love hearing this because I've been to so many resorts with my job over the years and I've never done the ski or snowboarding. So I've not seen them how they're supposed to look, if you like. This year, you can see the condition of the trails are incredible. Hands are feeling nothing. And even in Avoirie, up at the top, what is, first day we turned up, what is normally a piste that we'd ski down to get from the top of the mountain down to the bars into town, there's tennis courts. There's 12 tennis courts there that are normally buried in two meters of snow. I didn't even know they were there. It's insane. All right, so we've just got off the Mojang chair and I'm going to show you my favorite view in the whole region. Ready for this? This is just amazing. Look at this. You just, you can't beat this in my mind. Dancing midi, just phenomenal. People like different things than mountains, different things about mountain biking. All of this stuff in this region is amazing. The bike park runs, the fun runs, the flow lines and that, but nothing, nothing beats stuff like this for me. And just out in the air, out in the mountains, riding is the best. I'm going to gaze at this for a bit longer. I'm going to get trucking down there. It's starting to get pretty now. Look at that. This is what mountain biking is about. Getting out, getting out on the hills for big days, messing around with your mates. It's easy to get distracted with views like that. Oh man. With the sheer volume of people doing the event at Passports, here and there you're going to run into queues like this one here at Champeray. This ate an hour of our time, unfortunately, so we really did have to speed up a bit. One of the lifties actually told us that there was a storm coming in and there was a good chance the lifts were going to close again like they did the previous day. We really caught trucking and got some speed down. I actually got over 70 kilometers an hour down this straight here, which doesn't say much, but I'll tell you, it feels quick. Go. Go, go. Okay, it's go time. We've really got to make some headway down here now. This is the descent down to Lindoray where we're going to catch our last lift up to Evorad. Problem is, storm's rolling in. Might not look it, but it is. They will close that lift. That happened to our friends yesterday. We know it's going to happen soon. I've just got to get down here, get past as many people as I can. Not kill myself. Pass nice and wide. Stay off those brakes and get to the lift. All right. That is it then for hard sports. We've just hit thunderstorms. I've just arrived back to Evorad after 96.14 kilometers, a bit more than I thought. Is he all right? We've been riding all this different terrain all day and he got caught out by the most British mud you've ever seen. There we go. That's the end of another passable society. It'll be cheeky as long as it's a little bit longer. Heading to the booth now, spin some tunes. I've been checking time. I don't even know what time it is. Left at 8 AM to do passports with a couple of guys. 96.14 kilometers, I think it was. Got back late for my DJ set, which was supposed to be half five. Got back at half six, got seven. The booth was rocking because it just started raining. I'm still in my riding clothes now. I'm on my way back home to bed. Really funny night. Really good fun. Amazing energy. Amazing crazy French people. There's no crazy French people when they like to party. Wicked time. Okay, a bit more normal stuff on the socials tomorrow, I think. Sleep well. This thing is so sick. Packed up. We're back in the UK now. Not quite home, but on the way home now. Amazing to do passports, the event itself. I've just enjoyed this whole vlog format. I'd love to know what you think in the comments underneath. What would you like to see me do here on DracoTV? Do you want some more technique videos with tech how-tos on the bikes? Do you like the vlog stuff? Should I go riding with some of you people in different places? Let us know what you'd like to see in the comments under there. I'll see you in another video soon. Take care now. Ta-ra.