A Night Race, and a visit to the Czech Republic border

The top picture was taken last night before we set off with a couple of hundred others on the 10 km night race that is part of this week long skiing festival.

Sue and I skied together as she wasn't feeling well. We finished in 1 hour 12 minutes, around 160th out of about 200 participants. Quickest in our group was Andy in about 45 minutes, with Phil on his ski tails. Well done them. Some of the ladies in our group finished sedately in an hour and a half, but not without their adventures, with one of them having to be dug out of a hole and another skiing blind as her torch broke at the start.

All great fun, followed by another meal of huge portions at Hotel Biathlon.

Today a chap called Arthur had been recruited to chaperone the slower elements of our contingent on a pleasant woodland trail to Orle - for lunch where we had elevenses yesterday. Returning by a direct 5 km route, they probably managed 20 km today.

The 'fast' group (misnamed as I was in it) did a 6 km loop before chasing after Arthur's lot. We never caught them, perhaps as a result of the others having to wait for me every few km.

Both groups paused for photos at the border with the Czech Republic. Andy took the middle picture on a day of sunshine but extreme cold. My electric gloves went on after that stop - the phone needs bare flesh to operate its camera.

Lunch was a tedious affair. They were queueing out of the door at the café in Orle by the time I arrived. Rather than wait in a queue for an hour I skipped lunch apart from a few titbits from Stephen and Shane, and when their lunch finally arrived (thanks I think to Tania and others waiting interminably in the queue), I headed back to Jakuszyce on my own by a roundabout route to find Sue still in her sickbed. She seems to be wiped out by the bug that Helen then Ken had while we were in Canada.

My Garmin's battery expired after recording 26 km, probably within a kilometre of finishing today's ski. En route a skidoo was depositing wayside markers like the one in the bottom picture, offering a sense of what's to come on this trip.

After the lunch disaster a buffet meal in a restaurant in a nearby settlement will hopefully fill a few gaps, if not for Sue, who sadly remains poorly.