The Ghostly Tree of Queen Victoria ..

.. is less than a kilometre from the shore of Villeneuve, Lake Geneva. This walled island was given to the Queen by the Swiss people but she gave it back some years later. In the winter it is often covered in frost from the freezing fog at the end of the lake and appears like a ghost out of the water.

I was so excited to spot some very small birds with very long beaks on a small island in the Grangettes at the end of the lake. I was told by a man with binoculars that they were called, "Becassine des Marais" in French. This sounded very impressive until I looked them up and found that they are just Common Snipes - bouff - deflated.