Lent started late this year, so when half-term came along, the snow situation in the mountains was looking a little dodgy. We'd booked a chalet in a region called the Allgäu (pron. All-goy) for the first time and it proved to be a super holiday home - with four bathrooms!
Mike did us proud on Shrove Tuesday and made an awful lot of perfect pancakes, tossing them expertly before dishing them up to be smothered in chocolate spread.
The skiing was great on the first day, but the sunny days and mild temperatures meant that we were gradually skiing on what looked and felt like granulated sugar, except up high which was more like icing sugar on top of hard ice.
In Oberstdorf, a small town only a few kilometres away, there was a really nice swimming baths with a wave machine, so I took the two girls, Lucy and Rhiannon, there for an afternoon.
On our last evening we went on a torch-lit walk through a nearby gorge - very spectacular because the walls of the gorge had ice falls on them, though they had started to melt because of the week's mild temperatures.
Brilliant holiday. We've booked to go back again next year.
