This 'timidity' is frustrating me as I hate believing I need someone to lead the way.  It goes against my usual sense of independence and love of cross country flying.  The Alps make me feel very small even after flying them for over a month.  They are just SO BIG!  The confidence and experience I hoped to have gained whilst with the tour has not come to pass.  I still do not understand the valley systems because I have not fully explored them and without a more experienced pilot to fly with and no competition goal orientated reason to push out of my comfort zone.... I have simply flown - but not grown.

Saturday was a travel day with Cloudbase which was inflexible and a great pity because it was a spectacularly fantastic day to fly in Switzerland. From early morning there were pilots all over the mountains of Verbier and the valley leading away from Martigny as we travelled to Grindelwald.  I cursed inwardly as I looked up into the skies and saw pilots everywhere, wishing I was with them and not instead in the bus.  My fault.  I should have left the tour for the day, flown to the glacier as I very much wanted to and then made my own way to Grindelwald and joined up with the group in the evening.  

As luck would have it we got one short flight in before the valley switched off at Grindelwald, which was nice and Gary and his Ra showed me who was 'Tops' :-)  I could not get as high up the cliffs as he was no matter how hard I tried - curses! :-)  And neither of us got high enough to cross to the north face of the Eiger. The next day the weather was foul with cloud and rain flying being the stupid things we did.

With horrible smoky youth hostel type accommodation at the Alpenblick Hotel for 145E a day whilst on Tour to look forward to for the rest of the week and no flying till the end of the week to make it bearable, I decided enough was enough.  I needed sunshine and some possibility of flying. On Monday morning I said my good byes to the Cloudbase Tour and caught the train to Zurich and Madrid.

Some notes on the Cloudbase Tour

Khobi works incredibly hard and puts a tremendous effort into cooking really awesome dinners and seeing to the organisation and comfort of everyone.  Her meals are so good that we came to begrudge eating out - we were fed so much better by the Cloudbabe at 'home'.  Jan does his part, but I had little to no interaction with him.  They make a good team.

But it is inevitable that there are going to be grumbles on a month long tour.

For some reason I always got the short straw and given the worst accommodation of everyone.  Khobi said that this was because I insisted on having a flexible arrangement and jumping on and off the tour which disrupted her organising.  Although I agree that this might have not made it easy for her in allocating beds, there were times that I definitely got the worst for no reason other than others like Nancy and Gary would never have accepted sleeping 'the pit', the most horrible 'airless' sunless room at the Chalet in Verbier.  Peter and I were given this horrible darkhole in the basement situated next to the laundry and geyser room to share.  All the others had lovely rooms with balconys and sunlight.  I refused to sleep there and instead slept in the lounge.

In Grindelwald, Khobi tried hard to ensure that we all got nice rooms, but this is the Alpenblick - nothing more than a youth hostel and bar really.  She gave me a room that had a lovely view of the Eiger, but i was difficult because of the heavy cigarette smoke that was taking its toll on my allergies.  Jack and Jo and Gary and Nancy were also very unhappy with the backpacker style accommodation.  We are all business people over 40 years of age.  Our backpacker days are over.  The other four upgraded to better accommodation, 'paying through their noses' to do so.  Sharing tiny bathrooms in the hallway where your every bodily function is shared with all and sundry is just not a nice way to spend 145E per day on holiday.