Making tracks

Edit: I've changed the photo (I think - doesn't show up on my phone)) to a Snow Finch (Montifringilla nivalis) seen pecking around on the Pic du Midi. Rubbish shot, but extraordinarily cute bird, and one that's not yet counted on the blipbigyear.

These are not my tracks. When I took this shot I was waiting for the kids (who had followed Mr B off piste) to reunite themselves with skis, poles and good humour so we could carry on on our day's expedition to the other side of the mountain.

My knee was grumbling, but only painful if I made it do anything very much. So I mainly just turned right all day to take the pressure off that knee. Any long flat sections were dealt with by going to Mach 1 on the downhill stretch before the flat bit. Scared the bejeezus out of me, but avoid the walking on skis manoeuvre that currently makes me cry. By lunchtime, after a couple of rather exciting runs down a very steep, narrow tree lined run, everything was hurting. But it's surprising what an ibuprofen and a few glasses of local red can do for pain tolerance.

After lunch (huge queue, some ordering errors, but super hot sunny weather) we finally got to do the beautiful tree-lined run that a ski instructor recommended to me. "No-one uses it, but it's just beautiful", he told me. Well it's not beautiful, and it is terrifyingly steep, narrow and icy. Mr B had to walk down part of it (he has long skis) and CarbBoy felt and twisted his ankle. But we largely survived. (Of course I skied it with elegance and panache, and with no painful whimpering at all - which was a surprise to me.)

We then headed back over to our side of the mountain, after a very amusing incident of CarbBoy hugging a random mam's bottom in one of the annoying sloping lift queues. Finishing early, with our various niggling aches and pains, we took advantage of the cable car up the Pic du Midi being included on our lift price to pop up there for a look at the view. We squeezed onto the last car of the day. Up there all was as terrifying as you might expect for someone as scared as heights as I am. I closed my eyes all the way up and down, and all my photos of the view have fence in the foreground as I wasn't prepared to go close to the edge (it was slippery and I was in ski boots). However we did see a very cute bird up there (just remembered that - may go and change the photo if I have a good one).

Home then (after comical parking official vs car shenanigans including a guy trying to hide an estate car behind a roundabout while he waited for a bread delivery) for sitting still, eating and negotiating a deal to sell our broken car. Well, I say negotiating, mostly it was just saying "oui, ok".

Tomorrow is going to be just packed.... (Actually, that reminds me - I have packing to do....)