Skiing History ·
Roger Bushell – cross-country ski champion
Finally got around to reading Paul Brickhill’s account of The Great Escape, after watching the film umpteen times. The book is often described as a novel,…
Skiing ·
Women’s Day
Did Mrs Le Blond found a Ladies Ski Club?
Skiing ·
A piste of history
The first British Ski Championship, Jan 6/7 1921
Skiing ·
Le Carré: ‘far and away the best ski cartoonist in the business’
“I have only ever written by hand. The lapsed graphic artist in me actually enjoys drawing the words.” John le Carré, The Pigeon Tunnel (2016) In…
Skiing ·
PowdAir dreams: from Southend to Sion
A new airline, yet to incorporate let alone take off, wants to establish itself as the British winter sporter’s favourite, with Sion as its hub. PowdAir…
Skiing ·
Dirty Thursday in Lucerne
As I understand Carnival, darkly, leg-pulls are an essential part of the fun. For centuries servants have been cocking snooks at their masters, demure young ladies…
Mountaineering history ·
Crime Scene Matterhorn: Trial by Tabloid TV
Visitors arriving in Zermatt this week for the 150th anniversary of the first ascent of the Matterhorn may be surprised to find that history has been…
Skiing ·
JT Holmes pulls it off
On Easter Saturday my daughter and I visited the HQ of Alpine BASE jumping, the Airtime café in Lauterbrunnen, to meet the American skier and jumper…
Mountaineering history ·
Who cut the rope?
Zermatt came to the Alpine Club in Shoreditch yesterday evening to announce its plans for the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the first ascent of…
Skiing ·
Race day at Crans Montana
It’s a typical Crans Montana morning: dazzling. The confident forecast is hard and fast racing conditions for the early starters in the Momentum City Ski Championships…
Austria ·
Not so sure about snowsure
“Any chance you can supply a picture?” Cue small earthquake in south west Oxfordshire. The filing system is comprehensively rummaged, turned upside down and shaken. Could…
Skiing ·
Skiing by night – a darkmotif
It is a small detail, rarely omitted from the story. The brothers Branger, Tobias and Johann, ski pioneers in Davos c1890, conducted their experiments under cover…
Switzerland ·
The Michael Buerk hotel
Believe in better …. Every little helps …. Welcome to wonderful … Pursuit of more … Invented for life …. In modern marketing …. three-word slogans…
Skiing ·
St Moritz in winter: too good to be true?
Winter sports is a competitive business, and rivalry has been a powerful spur to its development. In the early days of alpinism the arch rivals were…
Switzerland ·
to the top of Europe
Can’t get enough of those Swiss trains. Leaving the first tracks brigade to their morning devotions on the 8.10 cable car to Schilthorn, we took the…
Skiing ·
By train to Switzerland
The by-train ski holiday has been likened to a jigsaw puzzle, with the difference that the challenge is not complete when you have fitted the pieces…
Skiing ·
Grimentz: good career prospects for traffic wardens
Switzerland’s third largest cable car has opened, bigger than many a ski chalet in the vieux village and only five weeks late. At a cost of…
Skiing ·
Heidi’s getting hitched
The news that Arosa and Lenzerheide, close neighbours in the Grisons canton of south east Switzerland, are to reach out across the summits and link their…
Skiing ·
James Bond, skier
Of course Bond skis. Half Swiss by birth, he is a citizen of the world, the go-to can-do man. Which is your favourite Bond skiing sequence?…
Skiing ·
I love Grimentz, but ….
I would like to make it clear from the start that I love Grimentz, the prettiest ski village in Switzerland. Like many others, I fell for…
Austria ·
London City Airport. The ski goggles have landed.
I had an email from City Airport this morning, announcing the arrival of some new ski goggles. It seemed an imaginative way to advertise an airport…
Skiing ·
Peter Barnes. Diamond Devil
Pete Barnes was a Kandahar ski club regular whom I met at Murren over many years for the Inferno race in January. He was the fastest…
Switzerland ·
Murder in the Swiss Alps: Daillon shooting is ammo for the gun control lobby
Their currency is riding high, their trains run on time and their mountain scenery is the envy of the world. But life in Switzerland is not…
Skiing ·
100 years of Swiss winter sports
“Revelers gathered in the Bernese Oberland town of Mürren Sunday to mark what many view as the birth of modern Swiss winter sports – 100 years…
Skiing ·
Lord Knebworth
Reading one’s own words is a strange experience, especially when someone else has written them. I got used to it when a resort guide book of…