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.

Today’s objective was to sail from our start point at Nikiana (shown in Blue) to one of the many places in Greece called Sivota. The particular one in this case being shown in Green. Its about 11nm and the forecast was for light winds. There was some breeze at 9AM so we headed out as soon as we could.

We sailed until the wind died at about 1pm and then motored for a bit until we entered the meganisi channel which funnels the wind and makes it much stronger. This channel featured in a blog post from a few years ago but going in the other direction in rather more breeze..

Day 1…. fast and furious

Much more pleasant this time.

On the way into Sivota, we sailed past what is obviously the lair of a bond villain. Why do they make them so obvious?

And then moored up in a location which looks handy for the bakery in the morning but also turned out later to be handy for a Karaoke bar which is less helpfull

Sleep.. eventually.

Yesterday’s warm weather and the overnight freeze had turned the runs at resort level to hard ice this morning and we had to very carefully navigate an entire Galaxy of Etoiles skiddimg all over the place  heading down to the first lifts.

Beautiful clear day, with a cracking view to Mont Blanc from the route back from Orelle.

Spotted this impressive cornice created by the recent wind as well.

There was a similar one on Cime de Caron a few days ago with people stood on it having their picture taken. You’d think that  given how much dangerous stuff there is around here without any kind of warning sign, people would figure out that when they do warning signs up, you really need to pay attention!

Today is medal presentation day for the ski school and of course this requires someone to dress up in an appropriate outfit or two.

… and someone to hand out Vin Chaud to the parents, or any other random people  like me standing nearby.

The English version of the parent’s briefing yesterday had included advice on how not to let children worry about passing the test… and the children arrived by the back entrance to avoid the media circus of parents with iphones jostling for a vantage point.

The Cime de Caron cable car was out for maintenance but you could still get to top from the other side. Remarkably few people seemed to have spotted this so the runs down were wonderfully quiet and we headed there after lunch.

The day warmed up steadily until even the snow at 2700m was getting sticky and at resort level it was wet, grey slush.

Nothing for it but to round out an excellent week with.

Needs to be eaten quickly before the cream melts in the sun….

So you may recall our dismay in February when we were in Val Tho on a Tuesday to discover that the waffle stand had a day off. You can imagine our horror then when we arrive for the week to be told he has finished for the season! We checked our travel insurance and it seems we are not covered for cancellation due to lack of waffles so we had reconciled ourselves to living without waffles.

Anyway, back to the skiing. The day dawned bright so we thought it was high time we used our 3 valleys lift passes and headed over to Mont Vallon.

As ever it lived up to its reputation for great views and awesome skiing.

Heading back we saw what we thought was a constellation of Bronze Star ski school kids at the top of a black run so we figured it must be easy enough. Turned out it was a constellation of Gold Stars and I’m not quite up to that standard having dropped out of ski school with only 2 stars years ago…. we all got down, they got more style points than us.

Lunch with a view at the cafe at the top of Peclet. There used to be glacier skiing up here but sadly no more.

In the afternoon we skied with our youngest member as they have now been promoted to chair lifts. This involves skiing in the beginners area amongst the afternoon ski school groups. Below the star groups we have Flocon (snowflake) groups. Here is a blizzard of flocons heading down the fun park.

Our party member is an Ourson (bear cub or possibly Teddy bear depending if you believe Google or ESF ). Apparently the collective noun for bears is a sloth…

Heading up for our last run we spotted the waffle stall open.

It would have been rude not to stop but that delay meant we caught the last lift by 4 minutes and skied past the Follie Duece just as they were kicking out the people who had been in there drinking for a few hours…. Worth it for a waffle though. Mont Vallon, sunshine, waffles.. what more can you ask for?