Champuloc, Italy, skiing, April 2013

Well we managed to squeeze in another week skiing in Italy. We drove across from UK  with a car load of stuff for the boat and dropped it all off in St Jean De Losne. While there we organised for a stern thruster to be installed. This will make a big difference when we venture down the Rhine. Spent a couple of days in St Jean De Losne taking down the winter tent and re-erecting the binney.

Ran into an acentric Australian who had bought a boat and was off touring. He had painted the whole boat including fenders with yellow and green. Talk about a patriot, but still a great bloke-- full of aussie knowledge !!!!!!!.

Sunday morning we motored across to Champuloc through the Mont Blanc Tunnel, which is about 11k long, and into Italy. We were meeting a group of friends (23) from Chichester and we had rented a whole chalet ( all catered).


Champuloc is a beautiful little village high in the Alps in the Monterosa Valley. The skiing and snow was the best I have experienced and being the last week of the season the slopes were completely deserted. I gather all the Italians are thinking about summer but summer is late this year. At times it appeared that we were literally the only ones there. We managed to fall over our friends Dave and Joanna Lynch Watsons( from NZ ) in a pretty strange way. I was sitting in a bar one afternoon and looking out onto the road, and I got a glimpse of a Motorhome gliding past. I recognised the tennis racket which was on the side of the van. A runner was despatched  to intercept them and managed to get them back to the bar.

Day out sking with Dave and Joanna
We had  a great day skiing with them and then the following day they departed to discover further Italian slopes. Dave being a little put out as in France he skis for free, but in Italy you have to be over 80yrs old!!!!

Where is everybody?????  Slopes just for us,, all the Italians think its spring!!!
oh here we all are…   at a bar after a hard day”s skiing…!!!!!!!

After the week skiing, drinking and having heaps of fun..  and one slight accident where Max suffered a scrapped head and concussion for a few hours, we motored straight back to Uk.
The next two weeks were spent finalising buying stuff and packing up all our belongings at Yasmins, and getting ready to head back to the boat for the summer.and frantically packed to the next trip back to the boat for the summer.