Wheeeeee!

Hello my friends.....I expect many of you are tuning in to see exciting news from our skiing holiday to France....well, there will be a certain amount of reportage from the Alps....but I am sad to say that this year's blog won't be quite as exciting as last year's...we had a few calamities....I have to whisper to you out of the hearing of the Typist that he has dropped a few clangers.....firstly, he lost his iBone on the slopes by failing to correctly zip up a pocket...so most of the photos and videos from the first few days of our break are lost and gone forever (but not all, as we did post a few to Instagram in advance)...and secondly, the clumsy galoot fell over and broke a couple of ribs and so he wasn't really able to video much of my daredevil skiing as it was hard to focus the camera whilst gasping and moaning... I hope you will forgive me...

....I tired on my skiing jacket before we left...I think i have lost weight since last year....

....I volunteered to drive....

...but the weather on the way to Dover was FILTHY.........so i just napped while typist drive the car....

.....we went on the magic train that goes under the sea again....I bravely got out of the car and found that I could breathe normally.....

.....I was happy to see that the weather in France was not too bad for a Friday night....

....we drove for a few hours before we stopped for the night...we stayed in a very tiny hotel near the motorway...but it was comfy and warm....(*those with a good memory will recall that we should have stayed here last year but mum booked it for the wrong night and we slept in the car!!).....

....ahem...slight jump in the story.....we arrived in Les Arcs the following day in time for lunch....this was the view from our hotel balcony!!...right on the slopes....the lift you can see is the one which takes us to our favourite run and to our favourite hidden cafe where Snow Cat lives...(see last year's blog)....PERFECT!

....I made myself right at home....making sure I had my wooly hat for warmth....

....our choice of hotel was in no way motivated by the fact that delicious pastries were delivered to the door to order at breakfast time each day....oh no...

....I made sure to do my homework.....

....I volunteered to stay in the boot locker on the warm-air dryer whilst the others went out skiing....

.....the only problem with the hotel was having to go to the lobby to get wifi....here I am sneaking onto Twitter.....

....it was busy every morning in the square....this is where all the ski schools met....

...I went snowboarding.....what?.....

....I went so fast that my beard developed a curious "prong"....these are the perils of travelling faster than other mohair dogs have travelled before....I am a test-pilot in all but name...

......this is the scene of typist's accident...we had to tip-toe through there a few times during the week...as you can see it's not exactly a sunny day....

.....and we did have quite a bit of this sort of weather to deal with....for non-skiers, this is hard because the  low light makes all the bumps on the slope invisible and typist fell over one of them he didn't see.....

....at times like that we usually head off for an early lunch...du pain, du vin, du chien!!.....see what I did there?....

...some chatting.....

...or perhaps some local shopping...here I am checking out regional sausages for my doggies pals.....

....sadly, our favourite pancake shop had been closed down and this fellow was standing guard outside.....he looked suitably embarrassed.....

....of course, we did do plenty of skiing...typist was able to ski with his broken ribs....as long as he was careful....

here we are....



...and then back up on the lift...

...but the lifts usually get you somewhere near one of these....we had this at the place where Snow Cat lives but we did not see him this year...we did hear one cat mewing in the distance so perhaps he was just busy when we visited....

...then more skiing...



...and more lifts....




...and keeping the paws crossed that the weather did not close in again...

...we had some exciting trips in the cable car.....

...we enjoyed the sun when it shone.....

....I...er....found this cake and returned it to it's owner.....you can't prove otherwise....

....I stuck to non-alcoholic drinks whilst out skiing....

.....but it was all too quickly over and we drove home a day early due to bad weather....that was a bit scary and we had to drive out of the mountains in a blizzard in snow chains....but we found our way to Troyes safely and were half way home by diner time...the nice folk at Ibis provided us a very comfy room for the night....

...their cap-paw-chinos were excellent...(*thanks to @dexlit for this photo)....

...and before I kew it I was presenting my papers at the border.....

....boarding the train for the tunnel one last time....

....leaving the lovely mountains behind......

...and finding a warm welcome back home!.....

....I hope you don't mind this limited report of what was a very good week. The good news was that Typist's achilles tendon was no problem at all and that bit of proceedings at least went well for him....

Jean Claude Clapton.....woof