A full value day today that started on an island near Tromso, Norway and finished back at The Cottage in North Wales, via a mountain summit and some sensational powder skiing!

Anticipating a long day, we didn’t rush to get up and enjoyed a final ‘Eide Handel’ coffee at the fjordside cabin before saying our farewells to our temporary home from home.

A ten minute drive later, we were up in the mountains and skinning uphill for the final time this season. The weather was perfect. Not a breath of wind and another 5-10cm of fresh snow under our skis.

For a combination of ease and enjoyment, we repeated yesterday’s ascent, just without the blizzard and whiteout!

This time, finding the summit was easy and the views just as good. A great place to enjoy a final mountain picnic before skiing down to the airport!

As hoped, the ski down was one of our best! We revelled in putting in some fresh tracks as we glided easily and happily back to the valley by ourselves.

The snow felt perfect…

And some of the pitches seemed to go on forever!…

Looking back up we zoomed in to see our tracks, just to the right of the small stream in the centre.

Next, we drove down to sea level to find a dry lay-by where could get changed and sort our kit ready to check in for the flight back to London. It’s not often that the airport is only 15 minutes drive away from somewhere like this!

We had timed things perfectly, to get a late hot lunch at the amazing ‘Eide Handel’ buffet on the way. As we got there another blizzard blew through, so we were glad to have been able to sort the gear in the sun! There was an option of reminder stew, but the bones put me off so we both had a huge slab of salmon with potatoes. Along with a couple of coffees, it only cost £17 in total as was delicious! We left feeling well set up for some travel time…

It was a further ten minutes to the airport, which is small enough to park right outside the front door. On the way we passed a couple of herds of reindeer down by the waters edge! With car keys returned the keys and skis checked in, we pretty much went straight to the plane (which needed de-icing before we could take off!).

The flight was very scenic and we had a row of seats to ourselves to stretch out in. We were one row behind business class, but it felt pretty luxurious anyway on our BA flight.

As we approached Heathrow we got a wonderful ariel view of Windsor Castle.

The last piece in the travel puzzle was driving home. We had considered staying a night at Fort Martin, but decided to push on home to Wales…

It’s the first time that we’ve seen the sky go dark since we left home and it felt nice to see a few stars again. Arrived back at The Cottage at 00:45, were in bed by 00:50 and asleep by 00:51….