Now this is the view you want to be greeted with out of the apartment window. Sadly I can’t admire it over my coffee as the supermarket was closed by the time we arrived last night so we need to go out and get some…

We decided to take it relatively easy today, so we stayed in the Meribel valley. Lunch was a sandwich at the bottom of Mont Vallon.

A bit more skiing and then an afternoon coffee at Pierre Plats. We have moaned enough about the demise of the brilliant ‘self’ that used to be here. It is now a coffee stop with a great view and still well worth a visit.

Our apartment comes with an unexpected benefit. Standard procedure for an apartment building ski room is to have one wobbly bench to sit on while you put your boots on. The bench is usually occupied by several squabbling teenagers and is located as far as possible from the timer for the light, which has been tuned to ensure that when you finally get to use the bench the light goes out just when you have a boot half on. This is so normal that I have always assumed it was a planning condition and no other configuration was allowed.

In a radical break with tradition, this building has several benches just outside the ski locker room with real lights and racks to stop other people’s ski raining down on your head when you bend down to tighten your boots!

According to my phone we skied 26.8km today, and 5KM vertical. My top speed was 37mph but I don’t think that was intentional.