Planned to go over to Meribel today, but reports of high winds and thus possibly not getting back put us of. Key thing here is it may be only a different valley in the resort, but if the lifts close then it’ll a stupidly expensive taxi fair to get back as they have to go all the way back to the motorway and back again…2 hours roughly…so, you don’t want to get stuck in the wrong valley.

Anyway, lots of skiing in Val Thorens, a poor, but happily expensive lunch and Li falling on the ice finished off another day. Dinner was spit roast chicken in Mexican wraps; excellent and very spicy.

10am start on the piste, weather isn’t as great as before; light is a bit flat but some good reds were conquered.

Good news…another expensive lunch…£35 and that was for pasta, onion soup & some salad; glad we don’t live here!! Still on the hunt for something more sensible, but the options on a mountain are quite limited. More skiing in the afternoon; dinner was had & lots of red wine.

Spent a lot of time in the ski shop trying to find Li’s skis; finally got another set for her then met up with some friends for some skiing. Skied a lot around Val Thorens, saw Amber (who is 4) in her ski gear – so cute.

The ski shop called to say Li’s skis have been returned; went to pick them up although the stupid Dutch woman forgot to return the poles. Had a very expensive lunch in a place called Le Goblet (Tony’s translation of the name). Weather is still amazing, sunshine & we are all burning; factor 20 isn’t strong enough, so went to get some factor 30.

After more skiing we retreated back to our apartment and slept (well, Li did). Tony went off to find some wifi and came across a bar called ‘Baramix’ – it wasn’t quite free wifi; Tony managed to guess their password.

Went up to friends’ chalet; played poker all night. Tony lost; Li, after joining part way through won quite a bit, shame it wasn’t real money!

Packed up and off we headed to the French Alps. Got stopped at the Swiss border; had our passports vetted. Not too bad drive to the Val Thorens in the French Alps (2.5 hours long), we arrived at the resort but couldn’t check in to our apartment due to some dopey French woman saying “it is the rules” in an annoying French accent. So, after much debating with her, we left, got changed into our ski gear in a public toilet & went skiing for the afternoon.

Weather; extreme sunshine! Surprised our friends in the resort that didn’t know we were turning up, they were very shocked. Li got her skis taken by mistake outside a bar, so lots of phoning around to get hold of the Dutch women who can’t tell the difference between gold and bright green skis; more progress will be had with the skis tomorrow we hope.

We made our way to Geneva for some breakfast, it was very strange passing through the border crossing as no one stopped us for ID.

We found the Centre and parked up, so many watch shops around (the prices were about the same as England but more choice). For tourists, there was very little to see apart from go shopping if you had an unlimited wallet. There was a lot of private banks dotted all over the streets, which shows how much money is pumped through Geneva; many having the ground floor as designer label stores.

We looked around the gardens by the old harbour port, there was a clock made of flowers with a working mechanism telling the correct local time – very impressive.

The Cathedral wasn’t much to look at, more of a little church in comparison to the ones we have seen previously. Found some fantastic Swiss chocolates and that was about it for Geneva.

Got woken up by the bunch of kids early as they were rounded up to leave. Feeling rather shattered, we dozed back off again and got up later than we wanted. Surprisingly we managed to get all our cases and the Champagne in the car.

Several hours travelling, (Li even drove in France and Tony was VERY tense during the whole hour). We passed through Dijon (managed to get some Dijon mustard) and did a super fast tour of the town. It was very quaint and picturesque.

We then moved on to a place called Doucier, in the French Alps, to see a big waterfall. It was quite impressive. We then proceeded through the Alps through various ski resorts and somewhere in Rhone-Alps we found a restaurant to stop off for some food. The view from the dining area was spectacular overlooking Lake Geneva. The food was excellent and Tony had a strange starter which looked like shrivelled up plums but it was a type of mushroom called Moulliers cooked in white wine sauce – they were very delicious.

Finally made it through the mountains in the dark down to our hotel, not on an industrial estate this time but very close (about 25m) to the Swiss Border Crossing. Even the hotel was the same chain we stayed in Reims, it was much better.

We got up and found the women’s 5th Battalion had checked out and also managed to use up all the hot water!!We booked to visit Lanson Champagne House at 10am; when we showed up we were told our guide was in a meeting and to come back laters. So we went to see the Surrender Museum which was where the Germans signed the treaty to surrender during the 2nd World War.

We got back to Lanson for our tour and they still weren’t ready for us so they decided not to charge us for the tour (saved 16 Euro). The tour of the plant was impressive and the cellars were dug inside the hill. We also had a couple glasses of their Black label bubbly, the tour lady was very helpful and recommended a village called ‘Hautville’ to see smaller champagne houses which was en-route to Epernay which was where our next Champagne House stop was (Mercier).

As we approached in to Hautville, it was part of the Champagne trail and it was more like wine tasting rather than a tour of the place. You reach a Champagne place and they invite you in for tastings (several glasses each); we did pick up a bottle or 2 at each stop.Mercier Champagne House was our final place of the day, built in to a hill. It had an electric train tour of the cellars and the lifts down to the cellars had see through glass viewing periods of the Champagne House years. By the end of today our car had 20 bottles of Champagne in the boot.

Another coach turned up at the hotel, unfortunately filled with school kids. The walls of the hotel were so thin, the kids were running up and down the corridors knocking on the doors. So you can imagine the lack of sleep we had.

Finally made it to some Champagne houses, first stop was G.H Martell & Co. more of an old museum set up and the old cellars were 30m below ground. The tunnels were from the old Roman days where it was an old quarry where chalk was mined. We toured part of the tunnels and then tasted 4 lots of bubbly afters (although it was supposed to be only 3 but Li blagged another one), we came out buying 12 bottles of bubbly.

We proceeded on to Pommery – another Champagne house which from the outside was very elegant and impressive. Inside was a 1000 bottle oak barrel with spectacular intricate carvings on the front. Lady Pommery who took over from the business after her husband died, loved art and kitted out the cellars with carved chalk pictures and modern art. The cellars contained 20 million bottles of champagne (Tony wanted to nab a few bottles but not possible). The house champagne is kept in the cellars for a minimum of 2.5 years. Each cellar was labelled with the City name they were selling to including Liverpool and Manchester. Didn’t see much apart from the cellars. We met a couple Americans and they suggested going to Lanson as they did a tour around their processing plant.

The evening, we decided to find the jazz bar advertised in a café we went to the previous day and it turned out to be the same place . Had a lovely meal and live music, taxi was expensive (about 35 euros round trip). We got back to the hotel and found a double decker coach had parked up with what seemed like the women’s 5th Battalion (as Tony puts it) has checked in. Was rather noisy as you can imagine.