TRAVEL
I used to be paired with my father rather than brother on what was one of the longest lifts in the world. Once the visibility was so bad that you couldn’t see the top of the stanchions and then, just to top things off, the Almighty summoned up a storm that resulted in a total loss of feeling in feet and hands, followed by a light-headedness and inability to communicate. The only comfort came from the certainty that I would be dead by the time we arrived at the top.
A few decades later, with my own children, skiing became an entirely different experience. Convenience was the top priority — ideally meaning that the walk to the lifts should take no more than 60 seconds. Oh, and chair lifts, please, rather than T-bars, and absolutely no queues. And so it was Val d’Isère one year, Courchevel the next, Val d’Isère the year after that and back to Courchevel, until we went back to Zermatt.
Admittedly they didn’t have to wear ski boots on the journey, but my children’s Zermatt experience wasn’t dramatically unlike mine of 40 years ago, because Zermatt remains pretty much the same as it always was. It’s one of the world’s most inconvenient ski resorts and I absolutely love it. In fact, skiing in Zermatt — never mind the cost (£5 for a beer on the mountain) and the fact that the three main areas are so badly linked — should be regarded as a rite of passage for all keen skiers. There are still no cars, the queues are hideous and that T-bar remains in situ in all its agonising glory, while the Matterhorn still stands there watching.
Nowadays there are electric buses that ferry you around the town, but they are so crowded that I’m surprised Amnesty International hasn’t registered a protest. You can take an electric cab but they’re pricy. So it’s still best to walk and talk. At night, you behave. Unlike in Val d’Isère, the streets don’t turn into a river of tipsy public-school boys and girls on the prowl, and there’s a refreshing absence of big screens showing Birmingham v. Chelsea in the third round of the FA Cup.
You can ski to Cervinia in Italy, where the restaurants are cheaper and inferior. And then you can come back to Zermatt for a slap-up feast at Mood’s, followed by a nightcap at Elsie’s Bar, which a member of White’s recently tried to buy because, it is rumoured, his proposal of marriage to one of the bar-girls was rejected. Teenagers seem to converge on the Hotel Post complex, which is a warren of bars, discos and pizzerias, while the trendy crowd congregate at Vernissage, a cocktail bar and nightclub with its own private cinema downstairs. It’s run by the artist Heinz Julen, whose first name came about because his father taught Jack ‘Beanz Meanz’ Heinz how to ski. But wherever you go to eat or drink or dance, you will be accompanied by Alpine charm and Swiss efficiency, plus a certain amount of Swiss inflexibility, which I find charming. We stayed at Hotel Perren on the advice of Lizzie Norton, who runs Ski Solutions. Lizzie and her ski-writer husband, Alistair Scott, have a flat in Zermatt.
Which makes my point precisely. They have skied all over the world, not least in resorts where you can step outside your chalet and click on your skis and where you don’t have to line up at the hole-in-the-wall machine every evening to replenish your wallet. And yet they have chosen to be in Zermatt. We had a drink with them on their balcony, which has a spectacular view of the Matterhorn. Lizzie reminded me that it was a party of Englishmen led by Edward Whymper who won the race to climb the mountain in 1865. But it was a costly victory. Lord Douglas and a guide called Michel Croz fell to their deaths on the descent. I wish I had known that at the age of ten. It would have made the pain of those boots that weren’t made for walking just that little bit easier to bear.
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