How charmless resorts and the yattering middle classes ruined skiing in Europe
As if sharing news of having signed on for Alcoholics Anonymous, my friend David furtively told me he is never going skiing again, ever. He quite likes snow. He may go to a flat bit of Sweden to enjoy heaped fir trees or eat cheesy potatoes. But he has done with the clatter and crowds and the slithering and the be-goggled herd, for good.
I nodded. I consoled him. Luckily, I am still bad enough at skiing to enjoy it. David has followed the lemming-like, middle-class obsession with chalets all his life: dragging his family up drag lifts, sending them to ski-school and becoming himself hugely accomplished at sliding down a hill on planks.
Klosters proved to be a garage forecourt of a town, with hooray Henrys hailing each other across the slush
Mrs Jones and I started late and finished last. When I was appearing in plays I couldn’t go; the insurance forbad it. Even when I wasn’t, nothing quite fitted my romantic preconceptions. I wanted the Alps to be cosy and fur-lined on the inside, and empty and tree-lined on the outside. Some hope.
Klosters proved to be a garage forecourt of a town, with hooray Henrys hailing each other across the slush. The lifts were an invasion of Orcs, banging their boots and rattling their weapons. The slopes would have puzzled Martians. “What in the name of the moons of Saturn are these earthlings doing?”
I never took lessons, so I’m still no good. If you’re as feeble at schussing as I am, blue runs remain challenging enough. Stay bad. Brilliant skiers wait in a shuffling lift queue for hours, but are so good they are at the bottom and back in the line again in five minutes. Boring.
Unlike David, I still feel the itch. I haven’t skied enough – and I might still catch the bug and finally belong to the yattering middle classes.
One almost snowless New Year, I dragged Mrs Jones to Morzine. While she hunkered down in the chalet, I was on the slopes early, negotiating my way down a carpet-width of manufactured snow with hundreds of thousands of other hopefuls, menaced by 14-year-olds bombing past on snowboards. By midday the pistes were gridlocked.
Clearly the school holidays have to be avoided. And big resorts. And France. And anywhere the rich like to go. (St Moritz is a daft shopping-centre where dogs in handbags are compulsory.) I have toyed with selling my pension and travelling to the Rockies or Canada, but apparently they lack charm “compared with Europe”.
Charm? Europe? In ski resorts? Les Diablerets was an uprooted suburb of Geneva. It had the advantage of being empty in the week though half the runs were shut Monday to Friday outside school holidays. Grimentz, was similar, though blearily romantic if you squinted to concentrate on a strip of 16th-century wooden high-rise huts that leaned in on each other like a Disney cartoon in the middle of a suburban sprawl. Gstaad, too, is an appalling sugar-coated, gold-rimmed shopping arcade. How can the Americas be less charming?
Mrs Jones and I went to Bergen in Norway a while back. That was good. The “wettest place in Europe” became enchanting, as winter turned all that rain to snow flakes. We took the train across the Hardanger plateau to Oslo and stopped off in a trackside hotel overlooking a waste of tundra for a single night.
As the only guests, we strapped on snow-shoes and walked out across the frozen lake. This was pure emptiness. Crunch, crunch. Shackleton had brought his team to train here. Some set off from this point to langlauf for miles. I did 10 minutes, until the bleakness seemed oppressive. We felt lonely, and it was all such an effort.
It’s bothersome. I fantasise about a winter chopping wood in a house in Vermont like Robert Louis Stephenson, hemmed in by the glistening silence. But I wonder if I would really enjoy it.
As for skiing in charming Europe, well it looked like global warming was going to do for that anyway. And then a few days ago record-breaking snowfalls changed everything. I want to go. But I envy David his decisiveness.
Europe’s most charming ski resorts
Griff Rhys Jones wants charm when he goes skiing. These resorts, recommended by our experts, might do the trick.
Mürren, Switzerland
Anyone dreaming up the perfect Alpine retreat might think of a tiny car-free village of narrow lanes lined by small chalets, at an altitude high enough to more or less guarantee snow on the rooftops. No doubt it would also have spectacular views of dramatic, soaring peaks – and be conveniently reached by a cable car followed by a mountain railway. Welcome to Mürren.
Courmayeur, Italy
This traditional mountaineering village sits at the foot of Mont Blanc, with Chamonix in France at the other end of the Mont Blanc tunnel. The heart of Courmayeur is the pedestrianised Via Roma, lined with smart boutiques and enticing bars and restaurants, as well as delicatessens and shops selling antiques and homewares. Narrow cobbled alleyways lead off on either side. Restaurants both in town and on the mountain are of a particularly high standard, and Courmayeur is one of the spiritual homes of the long, lazy lunch.
St Martin De Belleville, France
Most of the resort villages in the giant Trois Vallées ski area are notable for their convenience for the slopes rather than charm, but pretty, quiet St Martin, an old cheese-making village in the Belleville valley, is an exception.
Zermatt, Switzerland
Switzerland’s most famous resort brings together every Alpine cliché, from the world’s most photogenic mountain, the Matterhorn, to streets lined with a jumble of blackened, weathered, wobbly-looking chalets. Strolling around the car-free town is a pleasure, though there are bicycles and electric taxis to watch out for.
Lech, Austria
Thanks to royal patronage, few resorts have a more exclusive image than Lech. But while the original cluster of inns around the church and the river has expanded over the years in both quality and quantity, it remains true to its farming village origins. The picturesque outpost of Zug is a good base for those who prefer the tranquillity of an Alpine hamlet to the razzmatazz of a larger ski resort.
