Day 179, 30 December 2012, If we were to be asked in which country we found ourselves today, we'd be hard pressed to give a definitive answer - France/England/Scotland? The vast majority of packing was accomplished last night and we were up with the black birds of Tignes at 7 am eager to begin the day. And what a beautiful day it dawned in the alps, intensely blue sky, crystalline snow and not a breath of wind (see picture of where we skied yesterday - up the hill to Val D'Isere & down the other side). We enjoyed one final breakfast at Club Med and have both forgotten what hunger pangs actually feel like. Our taxi to Bourg St Maurice station arrived a few minutes early - luckily - as we still needed to collect our return tickets from the station prior to our train to Paris at 10.16 am. Also lucky was our driver's resemblance to a Formula 1 driver. Clear roads, fine day, thumping great Mercedes at his fingertips - despite hordes of cars on the road he made the 40 minute trip in 35. This allowed just that leetle bit more time to cool my jets in the queue at the rail station. Eventually we made tracks (pun entirely intended) and our train departed on time 99% empty. We even had fond thoughts of spreading out into empty seats. Within a couple of stations however, it was full to overflowing - Parisiens returning to work after Christmas week in the alps perhaps. The journey is scheduled to take 5 hours to Paris where we (and the 3 tonnes of luggage) have a solid 3 hours to get from Gare de Lyon to Gare du Nord for the Eurostar to London, England. When we arrive in London we have a mere 80 minutes to leave our skis with left luggage at St Pancras, grab a taxi to Euston Station and get aboard the sleeper to Fort William, Scotland... 11 hours of train tranquility - woo hoo. Just got to make it in time. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Yippee! Made it. It was lucky we had oodles of time in Paris. Managed to get on the wrong platform for RER D initially. Half the lifts in the metro were on Christmas holidays and the other half were miles from the platform - but we got there in the end. Chaos reigned at Gare du Nord - apparently all economy seats on the Eurostar to London were sold out - all day. We could have gotten on an earlier train for a paltry fee of €400 to upgrade to available seats in business... not that keen just to save an hour. Great trip to London - incomprehensible that we were under the English Channel. We invested in a black London cab (tick that off the checklist) from St Pancras to Euston which astoundingly only cost £5.60 - whereas two tube tickets would have been close to £9 - plus the aggravation of heaving the 40kg bag around. Good call there and meant we were happy to part with £10 to include a Christmas tip (that cabbie will be looking for daft Australians going forward). As it turns out we were at Euston with an hour up our sleeve for breathing space and all trains were delayed due to a "failed train". We thought this was merely a euphemism for a break down - but as it turns out there'd been a fatality on the tracks. Unfortunately all too common over the holiday period apparently. In any event, nothing stops the Caledonian Sleeper and we left only 10 minutes late. Dinner aboard and a quiet drink and we were asleep by 10 pm rocking gently on the rails. Too exhausted to be too excited (and that hasn't happened often on this trip!)