I have just returned from a month in Europe and, as I struggle with overcoming letlag, I am also having difficulty concentrating much about next years tours. Most my thoughts are still 20,000 kilometres away of course.

Suffice to say at this stage that this year's tours were an outstanding success and a whole lot of fun. I will put photos up on the website as soon as I can figure out how to do it. Next year's will be even better with moderate distance trips to Croatia and/or Montenegro, a repeat of Italy's short-distances and fantastic non-swimming things to do and what promises to be a wonderful cycling/swimming tour of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Check out the webpages for more info.

Our Italian swim tour in Lake Orta was a fantastic success. The swimming was great – not as arduous as Croatia the week before but excellent anyway in the crystal-clear and warm waters of lakes Orta, Maggiore and Mergozza. And the non-swimming bits were just as good – we hired an excellent guide for a couple of days to take us around the amazing architectural, historical and cultural places of interest in and around Orta.

If you are interested, our paparazzi entourage has posted a photo and video blog at markotter2015.tumblr.com.

Plans are to do it all again next year, as well as Croatia (and/or Montenegro) and Germany, probably in August. Details will be on Otter Aquatics website in a couple of weeks once I have sorted out dates 

I am now in Orta San Giulio in northern Italy, about an hour's drive from Milan. We are mid way in our week-long swimming tour of this enchanting place and it is going ... well ... swimmingly. All nine of us swam to San Giuilio Island today, had a great guided tour and lunch, then swam back. Fantastic! Over the next few days we go to some other close by lakes - Mergozzo and Maggiore - to do more of the same. If you want to check out some great pictures and videos, go to markotter2015.tumblr.com