First a couple of videos from yesterday.

This is me following a Parrot down part of BK park…

Then we have a clip from Ecrueil, the black run off the top of Tougnete

As ever the video does not do justice to either the 50Km/h speed or how steep it is.

That was the last of the sun we would see for a while. Thursday started out with the 0C isotherm at over 2500m, and the cloud base down at about 2000m. This gives a simple choice, ski below the cloud in the rain (which is not nice) or ski up in the cloud in the snow (which is er.. not nice). One interesting spot in the morning was someone with even more retro gear than us.

That is actually tweed…

After a couple of hours we decided to retreat for a long lunch in the apartment. Most of my ski gear is from the technological dark ages before social media bots decided elections and we could still fly supersonic across the Atlantic,  but even 20 year old Gortex XCR does an incredible job of keeping the water the right side of the material.

We ventured out again in the afternoon, there were layers of cloud so you ski from snow, down into reasonable visibility, then into rain.

The snow conditions underfoot are incredibly variable, from powder to slush, I don’t want to think what it will be like when it freezes.

This evening we had the madness of the floodlit sledging. We have a lot of video, here are a couple of samples.

The forecast promised sunny intervals but in fact we had pretty much full sun all day. There were a few wisps of cloud first thing, which created an effect not entirely unlike being inside one of those snow globe things. I tried to photograph it but failed. You might just be able to make it out from this one.

We headed over to La Masse for the morning, it was a relatively balmy -7C by the time we got there, with some stunning views from the top. I thought people were taking the onesie thing a bit far until I realised this was a carving.

Another interesting lunch stop. This one had classic brutal Les Menuires architecture looks on the outside..

But inside it was heated, with nice tables and chairs, drinking water, microwaves and even a coffee machine.

For the afternoon we headed over to BK Park and dropped in for a few runs. After our first run through the jumps (not as well constructed as last year) they closed them while the helicoptered an injured child out. For some reason this rather dented our enthusiasm to go round again.

A nice ski down to St Martin de Belleville,

this was a tiny village when we first visited years ago that seems to be growing quite a bit, and the lifts on the way up had queues of about 10 minutes or so. As it is Valentine’s day someone decided handing out some free alcohol would help?

This evening was the torchlit descent and ski instructors show. Now these are usually pretty random and chaotic events, but the floodlighting failed not long into this one which added a whole new twist. Imagine if you will a commentator trying to explain what some ski instructors are doing, formation skiing in the dark. Someone had the sense to set off the fireworks and we all went to the bar a few minutes early.

I have some videos from today, but I don’t have time to post them this evening. Here is a picture of a Marmot in the meantime.

Today dawned bright and sunny as forecast, and -12C at base of the lifts… that’ll be cold then. We decided to head over to Val Thorens VT but ‘dropped in to area 43’ to get some air first (I think that is how you say it to sound cool… might need a hashtag in there, not sure).

Even better than sunshine was the distinct lack of wind, so we were able to get up high, and get views like this.

As you can see a distinct lack of crowds at altitude, but the lift were busy lower down.

As today is carnival apparently, struggling to see what that has got to do with pancakes but whatever… There is some deal that if you ski in fancy dress you get a free sledging pass on Thursday evening, or something like that. Anyway, Ruth and I decided to dress up as retro 1990s skiers, by the simple method of wearing our normal gear, but our skiing companions joined a lot of other people by skiing in onesies..

The good news is that the ‘self’ is alive and well in VT although this one has the disadvantage of being at 3000m, there are plenty of others.

We are really getting into this take a picnic idea, and VT has a few places marked on the map. Here is today’s, a cracking location, but it is still about -10C so eating with gloves on. Tried to sort the gopro on my helmet out for the afternoon but my hands were just too cold.

We dropped in (or is that hashtag dropped in, I’m getting confused) for a few runs in the family park, there are some serious jumps near here as well, we saw the helicopter pick up 2 stretchers while were in the area…

Time to head home after the inevitable stop… must be 25 years since we first had one of these.

Trying to cook pancakes this evening (not in onesies) which at least avoids any re run of the embarrassing moment two evenings ago when I mistook the tart aux framboise for a cork mat….

The good news was that the snow that had made for a rather irritating end of the day yesterday had carried on overnight and had given us a nice 20cm of fresh snow. The bad news was that it was still snowing, giving us a complete white out at the top of the first lift. We stayed in the trees around altiport for a bit until the weather improved and we headed over to Courcheval  Courch for lunch. We had brought sandwiches and found a really nice indoor picnic area to eat it. You need to be careful which door you enter by though….

Of course that would not pose a problem for these guys seem to be making a good living cleaning the tables of crumbs from the outdoor area.

In the afternoon the sun finally came out so we headed to the family fun park (I think the correct term is we ‘dropped in’)

The we headed over to 1650 in some seriously nice weather….

You’ll notice the lack of people… in general it has not been very crowded at all. This may be partly because not all UK schools are on holiday and apparently it is only the start of the French school holidays season, but it may also be because you have to be barking mad to be out in the conditions between these sunny intervals.

The cloud socked in big time so we headed home and discovered that everybody who was skiing was trying to do it in the same cloud we were. Came across a lad who must have been about 10, carefully working his way down the slope in full  control. When he caught up with his mother she shouted at him “Daniel can we stop hanging around and ski down really fast, I’m really scared up here”. Nice to see the brits out giving a masterclass in responsible parenting…. We made it home in the end through white out and invisible lumps of snow to try and rip your skis off, for the sun to come out just as we made it to the apartment…

Felt we  had deserved a trip to my favourite Mottaret restaurant which serves the best tartiflette in the alps (trust me I have researched this). They only have 5 tables to you need to book.

There was floodlit sledging this evening… we passed.

Hoping that tomorrow brings more of this….

Possibly without the thumb in the way.

Well the weather forecast was completely useless… well to be fair it was accurate for about an hour. Cloudy and cold but no snow.

Sadly for the rest of the day it was snowing so we stayed below the treeline when we could. It was also much warmer than predicted, but that is a good thing.

Lunchtime was spent bemoaning the lack of the self. It seems that pretty much throughout Meribel and Courchevel now you have a choice of a hotdog in a deckchair or a relatively expensive restaurant lunch. There used to be 3 or 4 reasonable self service places. Tommorrow we’ll take lunch with us.

The end of the day was a complete white out. We spent 45 minutes trying to work out which way was down on ‘one last run’ to arrive in Mottaret from the right direction and avoid a 3 minute walk….

I wonder if that forecast will be even remotely correct….

An uneventful trip on the Eurostar. The last part of the journey is always a bit stop start and one of the stops was handily by this waterfall.

Not sure we have ever seen snow this deep. The forecast looks a touch cold though.

Just got to battle with the bizarre French appartmnet bedding and then we can get some sleep…..

So we mentioned weather forecasts earlier. The forecast has been consistently predicting that the Mistral wind would blow today, in fact it came in early giving us a very windy night. This was the reason we were in the marina in Porquerolles not on our original plan of anchoring near the neighbouring island of Port Crow.

We had about 12 miles to cover to get the boat back to Port Pin Roland, the wind was blowing over 30 knots exactly from that direction. Opinions vary as to the exact wind speed, I saw 40 knots on the instruments at one point, but there were a couple of other things to focus on…

We motored into big sea, the mistral has over 100 miles of sea to pick up the waves and the island is in the full force of it. This makes it all rather uncomfortable as the boat slams into the waves. The odd thing is, we took various pictures and videos but none give any real impression of it. So here is a nice spray picture by Anya who has joined us for the last two days.

Once the coast allowed us to turn off the wind we got some sails up and speeded up. The engine that can push us at 6 knots on flat water struggles to get over 3 knots against the wind and sea but half our genoa can take that up to 6. We were never going to go anywhere near as fast as this guy through.

By the time these pictures were taken we were in the entrance to the harbour so the sea had flattened out but you can see the wind on the sea… but still this picture does not seem to convey its force.

That yacht was tacking upwind to the place we were motoring to and effectively keeping pace so we had to give way to him every time he tacked and came across us.

Anyway, we made it in and had dinner in a restaurant on the beach, while the wind whistled past outside.

… although you can’t see it in the picture….

We decided to stay a second night on Porquerolle for complex reasons involving some incoming weather. There are reports of dolphins south of the island so, having been there yesterday and seen nothing, we thought we would go that way again.

Big rolling seas that we have not had all week sorted out and crockery that was not properly stowed.

No dolphins but we spotted a really good anchorage at the sheltered end of the island.

And of course a superyacht in there as well.

We had to anchor a little way out in 10m depth so it was a bit of a swim to get to anything interesting but once we got there we were rewarded with load of fish.

And then we met Roland the Octopus…

There were some fish hassling him so after a while he released some ink and headed off. We sailed back in a handy 30 knots of Mistral wind, to find that chaos continues to reign in the marina at Porquerolles…. There are guys here with little ribs who can help you get in when it is windy… but help seems to extend only as far as shouting and adding to the confusion in the unlikely event there is not enough. So wild life all around today, but a stroll up to the village for an ice cream finished it off nicely.

Here is our route from today.

We had to motor due to lack of wind to Port Cross which looks like a perfect place to spend a night… but that is not going to work out this trip.

The wind got up and we sailed around porquerelle, which is stunning. We stopped for a snorkel near our marina for the night. We made a complete mess of anchoring but got some good fish pictures.

I tried to get the fish to eat the dead skin off my feet but they don’t seem to have worked out this opportunity yet. Any lack of entrepreneurial flair by the fish is more than made up for by this chap….

Who motors around the moored yachts selling ice cream…

Anyway we headed into the marina, making a right mess of that as well, it seemed to be somewhat chaotic inside, then just when we thought it had calmed down a superyacht turns up.

They have to turn around millions of pounds worth of boat while a few hundred thousands of pounds of boats have nowhere to go and kind of drift.

Anyway they got it moored and chaos was resumed. We have a few more superyacht pictures we’ll share. There seem to be a lot of them about.

This morning I spotted a couple of other things to do.

Seemed to be some sort of boat with underwater windows. There is another one where we have stopped tonight as well.

And if you don’t fancy the depths then.

Anyway, we were not tempted by any of these. We went sailing. But before we get to that here is the picture of us sailing yesterday.

We sailed back west, having spent two days heading east. We only had 10 miles to cover so we had time to anchor up for a swim at lunchtime. We picked the quietest bay we could find… but loads of boats coming and going. This guy…

Opened what they call the garage and got his avon jet rib out to take his kids tubing…

The coast has resorts every few miles it seems. Tonight’s destination is Le Lavandue. Big marina, loads of shops and restaurants. The three we have stayed in have much in common but we think we like this one. Let’s hope the music stops before 2AM tonight.

There are thousands of boats of all sizes here. On the way in we saw some optimists out with the sailing school.

And at the other and of the scale….

That must be 100ft of yacht…. the 38 feet we have are more than enough to turn between a few million pound’s worth of packed marina thank you.

If all goes to plan we head to the islands for a couple of days tommorrow.