A day of layered clouds that caused the visibility to come and go in an infuriating fashion.

We decided to ski on the runs above Les Menuires and came across some pretty serious ski training.

They had a huge entourage with them.

We shared saw members of the Swiss Ski team in a lift queue and shared a lift with who coaches who seemed to be Italian but swore in English…

We also came across this group

They were doing some sort of competition if they were able to provide evidence of having a rave in a bubble with strangers. Our best dancer was in another bubble but the rest of the party were able to help them.

We think this lot

Were probably doing the same competition and were apparently dressed as Loraxs? Me neither….

Lunch at a thoroughly over engineered picnic spot in Les Menuires with solar phone charging.

And a post to put your phone in for a selfy

Assuming of course today that you were after a white background.

Our luck ran out 2 runs from home and the cloud came in to create a real “which way is up” whiteout, which made getting back pretty unpleasant. At least we knew where we were going…

Oh and I managed to snap my contactless liftpass in half so had to clomp into the liftpass looking like a bedraggled yeti to persuade them to give me another one.

At least it is now snowing.

Always good to start the day with a bit of fiction… no not the Daily Mail this time the weather forecast. Here is the forecast:

And here is the view out of the window.

In reality it was sunny in the morning with some cloud and snow flurries in the afternoon.

Whenever we talk about skiing here back in the 1990s we get comment like “it must have been so much harder with the dinosaurs” well I can tell you there are just as many dinosaurs today as there were then.

We headed over Courch 1650 to get some pictures for Insta from the far lefthand side of the piste map.

Lunch was had in a spot that has proved very reliable for spotting the local wildlife

Yes, they are skiing in dressing gowns and no, I have no idea why.

In the afternoon we headed back to Meribel.

And decided to grab a coffee at the Rhodos cafe… which we have been visiting for 32 years….

For some reason we decided to visit la Piste Animaux which we think has had an upgrade since we were last here.

It now features some terrifyingly realistic plastic animals to traumatise children.

My watch is suggesting I burned 3000 calories covering 60km in 6 hours…. I wonder how many calories are in a large Tartiflette?

The forecast promised sunny intervals, and this interval lasted almost all day. The snow depth is good but with unseasonably warm temperatures it was very much soft spring snow by the afternoon.

Lunch was at the top of Tougnete, not sure how long these picnic tables have been at this spot but the look fairly new. The view across the Belleville valley is really good, I remember photographing this back in 1993 or thereabouts.

The cloud bank makes the orientation diagram a bit hopeless though.

Quite a few of these wooden heart shaped things are popping up. They have some sort of seat and we think the idea is you sit in them and have someone take your picture to put on Instagram…

In the afternoon we headed over to Saulire. Looked at the couloirs but decided to save that for another day!

The good news is the Saulire cable car is back in operation so we can go back to complaining there are too many people up here.

We stayed in a hotel in Lille which was actually over the road from the station. Like hotel on one side, station on the other.  Here is the view from our room.

The thing is that last time someone told me a hotel was literally over the road that meant I had to leave by the back door, step over some drunks, go around a group of drug dealers and down a dark alley a few hundred yards. So maybe literally means something different for hotel locations?

TGV to Lyon and then a normal train to Moutier.

Sadly the normal TER trains have neither luggage racks or allocated seating so everyone ended up pretty much mixed in with their bags

The usual nightmare when we got off the bus to figure out how to get into the building from the road side, but the view is good and the snow, whilst not ideal, looks OK. We even got pillowcases that matched the pillows!

Oh and we have cool lampshades

So this year we thought we would try travelling to a ski resort via Lille instead of Paris.

Yesterday Eurostar cancelled all trains to Paris, so St Pancras was even more rammed than ususal.

It turns out that if you don’t mind spending an extra day it is cheaper to overnight in Lille than the Premier Inn at St Pancras so here we are with an afternoon to explore Lille.

It is a lovely afternoon in Lille with all kinds of weird stuff going on.

We walked to the Citadel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citadel_of_Lille which seems to be both an active military base, and an ancient monument. This leads to load of tourists wandering casually past these signs.

Everyone else seems to think it is summer

While we walk around in snow boots.

Back into the old town. Tempted by this place.

But ended up in the only place with decent vegan options drinking beer made from stale bread.

https://pain-de-minuit.com/biere-au-pain.php

So the flip side of coming this far south is that we have 20 miles to sail back North on the last day and we need to have the boat back by 3pm. So we got up early, nice sunrise as we left our mooring…..

We got a better look at this part of Ithaca on the way out.

How do you think the estate agents describe those houses? Secluded location close to local amenities?

Sailed all day with just a bit of motoring when the wind died at two points and approached our destination an hour ahead of schedule.

The crew head off to the beach while the skipper waits for the charter company to come and check the boat over.

This is the end of the season so there are no Tavernas open. This problem is solved by the flotilla company organising a beach BBQ.

Well it is not quite on the beach, but it is certainly a BBQ. A great way to round off an amazing week.

Today is the lead crew’s day off so the boats are all sailing on our own to different places. We plan to head south in search of wind so we got up early.

We have been connected to shore power overnight. It seems to work but I’m not really sure why.

We are pretty sure we have found Tracy Island. Obviously it is not marked as that, to avoid giving the game away they call it Atakos.

Anyway it has a famous bay called one house bay.

In theory this was an easy place to anchor but our first attempt at ended up with the chain caught on a rock which was secure, but left us in an awkward place blocking another boat so we hauled it up and layed it again.

The two black dots on the beach in the photo above are two black pigs who live here… they swim out to anchored boats and expect to be fed! Who knew pigs could swim!

So our destination for tonight is Frikes. We sailed until the wind died and then motored the last few miles. Stunning views and very quiet.

All the Tavernas here have shut for the season so there is not much competition for mooring spots.

Dinner is to be found 2km up the hill in the  town of Stavros, from which you can look down to the other side of island, you can see a couple of yachts at anchor.

They have lots of museum displays and information boards. The museum is unmanned and seems to be open all evening

There are 2 restaurants, one is called ‘the delicious’ which we guessed might be aimed at tourists and chose the other one. Food was definitely a notch up from all the other places we have visited and the service was several notches up. According to my watch the walk is 248 calories up 138 down so I had a starter and a main course…

Sunrise in Kalamos.. Notice there is some wind…

In almost every place we have stayed we have heard local fishing boats going out at first light. This one was coming back in about an hour after sunrise.

You’ll also notice some breeze. We headed south to an island called formikoula.

Tricky anchoring but great swimming and lots of fish, including these blue ones. No idea what they are.

There are seals on the other side of the island, we did not see them but another boat did.

The wind had dropped over lunch but came back up in a slightly different direction giving us a brilliant long reach to our stop for the night. We left a lot of steering to our autohelm (who is called Otto von Wilhelm), but several other crew members had a go.

We are moored up tonight at a Taverna near Vathi. There is a dutch group here as well, can you guess which boats are theirs?

Bernard was looking a little deflated this morning but with some coffee and warm sun he soon perked up.

Light winds again so we motored for a bit until the wind picked up so that we could sail to our planned lunch stop.

We’d just got the boat set up goose winged doing a nice 3 knots when when we spotted some dolphins. We were just passing a fish farm so we wondered if they go there for lunch? I didn’t get any pictures unfortunately but another boat did and shared this..

After all that excitement, the wind dropped again and we anchored for lunch

The place was teaming with fish even without us getting in.

We went snorkeling and saw loads of tiny fish and some big ones.

Ended the day in Kalamos, moored alongside for a change.

The lead crew ran a quiz in a local bar before dinner. We came second by half a point but it was entirely Madonnas fault.

So the cats here take things to another level. This kitten came on the boat looking for breakfast.

We threw it off and it just calmly walked back on.

Total absence of wind for most of the day…

But later a little breeze showed up and we tried to sail down wind. There wasn’t enough breeze to hold the sail out but that is what we have a boat hook, a broom, some duck tape and spare crew for…

Decided to go for a swim

Here you can see our boat for the week lying at anchor. And after a few years hibernation in a cupboard Bernard has come out to play!

There have been stories of Orcas attacking yachts so we keep him on a lead so he doesn’t worry anybody.

Finally some breeze in the afternoon for a bit of a sail before heading into Paleros for the night. No Karaoke bar this time, the owner of a restaurant that is perhaps 5 minutes walk came to meet arriving boats and tell us about his free showers and wide range of vegan options so he got our business a bit later.

The view was not too shabby either.