It is the time of year when active travellers turn their thoughts from cycling to skiing. Those in the northern hemisphere do anyway. So it’s off to the Earl’s Court Ski Show for me, with the usual feelings of resentment, against better judgement, in spite of myself etc. It’s a just a shopping arcade, for God’s sake. Even Harrod’s isn’t cheeky enough to think it can get away with charging us to go in. But the Ski Show does … and we do.
As dear Alastair (Scott, of fond memory) used to say, the ski show plays its part in the campaign to get us excited about the coming season by counter-suggestion. It brings together all the things that are the exact opposite of what we love about skiing. Ear splitting din, excessive heat, indoor confinement and dense crowding worthy of the Waterloo & City Line, vile food. I’m not sure about this. Loud music and crowds are all too frequent an annoyance in ski resorts and on ski lifts. I’m too hot while skiing more often than too cold. And as for the food, it depends where you go.
The Ski Show has a knack of coinciding with the first big snowfalls of the Alpine winter, and this year is no exception, bringing that meteorological connoisseur’s item the ‘Retour d’Est’, which acts (I think) like a fire-fighting aeroplane, picking up water over the Gulf of Genoa and dumping it on the southern French and Italian Alps. A metre of snow fell in the Queyras last weekend, 50cm on the Franco Italian border at Montgenèvre. A winter of plenty for Italy? Time to book the long-promised trip to La Foux d’Allos? Perhaps. November snow doesn’t usually last, but if it sells a few holidays it will have done its job.
The Ski Show used to be a good place to buy cheap ski gear. Around the fringes there were dodgy clearance traders selling last year’s bankrupt stock and perfectly serviceable ex hire kit, but the price maintenance mafia has seen them off. I used to enjoy the mad inventors who brought their gadgets. Skidometers; a patented cream – closely related to Colgate – that you could smear on your goggles to stop them misting up; or hand-warming sachets that shared a magic ingredient with cheese and onion crisps. As the ski market ‘matured’ the cost of sharing a stand got too much for these engaging characters.
Outside there were usually a few buses that you could sit in, feel your knees pressed hard against your chin and think better of a ski-by-coach holiday. If they had an SNCF railway carriage with eau non potable and 6 couchettes to a compartment I could have a cramped lie-down and save myself the misery of an overnight train ride to the Alps.
What ghastly surprises will the 2012 London Ski Show have in store?