5/4/13 – April skiing: where to go for a last blast

Fabulous spring skiing in Ischgl two years ago. This year, those brown patches are white

To round off this snow-blessed winter in the Alps and escape the persistent winter chill of home, if you have a few days and a few pounds to spare I suggest you go skiing.

I have a final trip booked, to Val d’Isere – not a usual haunt of mine as I generally head for Austria, Italy or Switzerland, but it will be a nice change. Last time I stayed there, apart from one short press trip a couple of years ago, was when I was training to be an Inghams rep nearly 20 years ago.

Anyway, if I didn’t have that trip booked, here are the places I’d consider…

1. Engelberg in Switzerland. The top slopes are open till May 26, the town is lively, there’s accommodation for all budgets (including a youth hostel) and it’s only an hour from Zurich airport. There are also some brilliant local guides. Read more about that in my Telegraph article from last season about where to join off-piste groups.

…and when the slush sets in, here’s what you can do instead

Zermatt, where the views are at their best at the end of the season

2. Zermatt in Switzerland. It’s open till May 5, the town is vibrant, busy and full of ski mountaineering folk – and the shops, for once, are offering plenty of end-of-season bargains on gear (not forgetting the pyjamas, nighties and underwear, at Calida, towards the top of the main street). Again, there’s lodging for all budgets. But it’s far from the airport, so go for a week to make it worthwhile. Read more in the insider’s guide (and here is page 2) I compiled at the start of this season.

3. Obergurgl in Austria. It’s open till April 28, and with the village at about 1,900m and most of the skiing between there and 3,000m, there’s very quick access from hotel or b&b direct to the snow. What’s more, there’s fantastic touring, with a great choice of day tours. It’s less than 90 minutes from Innsbruck, and if winter flights have tailed off by the time you want to go, you can fly to Friedrichshafen, Salzburg or Zurich instead. Read my recent piece in the Telegraph, and my off-piste article from last year, to find out more.

4. Ischgl in Austria. The lifts aren’t due to close until May 1. I went late in the season a couple of years ago and despite it not being a good snow year, there was excellent cover thanks to super-efficient snowmaking earlier in the season. There’s good touring nearby in the Silvrettas – hire a guide and stay overnight in the Jamtal Hut (open till May 4), for instance. Keen apres-skiers will know its reputation for lively bars, which is merited – read more in past blogs of mine, such as this one, by entering ‘Ischgl’ in the search box on the right.

Just think of the tan you will get

Other late-season favourites of mine are St Anton in Austria, which stays open till April 21; Alagna/Gressoney/Champoluc in Italy (only till April 14, sadly – but lift passes are free till then if you book three nights locally, and it’s amazing value for food and drink); or Cervinia in Italy, which shares Zermatt’s slopes but not its prices (open till May 5). An underrated place probably not on your radar is the Engadine, where Diavolezza/Lagalb stays open well until May 20, and Corvatsch until May 5. The area offers excellent ski touring too – and don’t be put off that it’s in the St Moritz area: there are hostels and modest b&bs as well as swanky hotels.

Of course, you could always plump for Colorado or Utah, where a snowstorm is meant to be heading right now, or for snowy Scotland, where conditions are excellent.

I’ll leave you with the details of four great cut-price deals that landed in my inbox  this week from Inghams, which might be worth a look if you can make a dash for the Alps at the last minute. I’m sure the other tour operators have similar offerings at equally appealing prices.

St Christoph, Austria. £349 for a week’s chalet-board (that means half-board, including wine with dinner and CHOCOLATES afterwards) in a chalet hotel with a pool and doorstep skiing, including return flight from Gatwick to Innsbruck on April 13.

St Anton, Austria. £349, chalet-board, similar to above. There’s no pool but the place, Chalet Gampen, looks pretty good, with whirlpool, sauna and all that stuff. Departing from Gatwick on April 13.

Tignes, France. £369 at Chalet Hotel Le Dome, described as ski-in, ski-out. Similar deal as above, flying to Chambery on April 13 from Gatwick – easily the best airport for Tignes, being about 90 minutes away.

Val Thorens, France – the high-altitude end of the Three Valleys. £369 at Chalet Anais, departing from Gatwick on April 13, flying to Chambery.

Happy holiday-hunting, if you have time!

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16/3/13 – Engadine marathon 2013: the verdict

Making for the starting pens on the lake at Maloja

Aches and pains? Huffing and puffing?

Well, up to a point.You can read more about what it was like to be a first-timer in the largest ski race in the Alps in my Telegraph and Planet Ski articles.

But last Sunday I had a surprise: the Engadine marathon was fun, satisfying and not as exhausting as I’d predicted.

They arrived in matching pairs…

Along with 11,312 of  the 12,540 starters, from elite athletes to flailing novices, aged 16 to mid-eighties, I finished the 26-mile course.

It followed the snow-clad frozen lakes and wooded paths of the far eastern corner of Switzerland, in the Graubunden canon.

…they arrived in matching groups

If you’ve seen it in the papers lately it’s mainly because Pippa and James Middleton – the siblings of Kate Middleton, Prince William’s wife, in case you live on another planet – were taking part.

Pippa was the fastest British girl at 2hr48 and her brother, James, took 2hr17.

And there was even a Brit in rather fetching tweeds and a Jimmy hat

The fastest Brit, Alan Eason, clocked an impressive 1hr41.

The overall female winner, a Finn in her mid-thirties, glid round in 1hr29, setting a women’s course record on her first Engadine outing.

Which ones are mine again?

She was only a minute behind the male winner, a 23-year-old Frenchman, while the slowest racers took six hours.

I was overjoyed with my time of 3hr30 (as a first-timer of questionable fitness, four hours had been my target).

And we’re off. You can see the classic style racers on the right, following the grooves

Anyway, here’s the full list of results.

After clicking on Results 2013, you can view them by class (which corresponds to age and gender), or by nationality.

Something especially impressive is that there were 223 finishers in the men’s over-70s category – and the oldest racer was born in 1926. This is a sport for everyone.

This is me a few miles before Pontresina, where there are bottlenecks by the hills

Here’s another link some readers may find entertaining.

The super-efficient organisers have posted videos of – seemingly – almost every finisher crossing the line.

Simply find a person on the results list you want to watch, look up their start number (eighth column from the left), input it or their name into the field on the right of the screen and there they are. 

This is what was needed afterwards – cakes from Kochendorfer Conditorei in Pontresina

Here are some numbers to try – though with the first few it’s hard to tell which is which as they’re going so fast:

Pierre Guedon (the male winner, from France) – 317

Riita-Liisa Ropenen (the female winner, from Finland) – 9

Alan Eason (the fastest Brit – I can’t identify him, but you get an idea of the speed) – 1079

Pippa in the middle: the Middletons and friends at the finish

Christian Wenk (a paraplegic who completed the race in a sitski) – 4191

Pippa Middleton (in red and black; photographer close by) – 4606

James Middleton (in black, I think, with red headband, skating past camera) – 41847

Me (in pink and black; the knackered-looking one making straight for the camera) – 5807

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7/3/13 – Engadine Marathon: three days to go

A nice flat bit of marathon course near Samedan

In three days’ time I’ll attempt to cover 42km on cross-country skis in the Engadine Marathon.

There’s no reason why I shouldn’t succeed; after all, 11,000 people do so each year, some of them less fit and less confident on flippy little langlauf skis than me.

What strikes me is that I’ll be exercising for four hours continually (Rivella and banana breaks excepted), which I have never done before. Cross-country skiing looks gentle but is surprisingly dynamic, and I the skating style definitely feels like proper exercise (I’m sure the classic style does too; I haven’t tried it).

PJ going smoothly up a hill during practice, 4km from the finish of the Engadine Marathon

My training regime (if you can call it that), the start of which I outlined in my last post, has continued as follows:

Feb 26 – 45min yoga in lunch break

Feb 27 – 1hr yoga

Feb 28 – 45min horse ride

March 1 – 25min run on treadill, covering 4.3km

March 2 – 1hr horse ride and 30min shovelling muck (good for arms and core)

March 3 – 2hr horse ride (including on foot up Leith Hill, to give the horse a rest and make me puff instead) and 30min bike ride up Pitch Hill

March 4 – ZERO! (Or is it called a rest day?)

March 5 – 25min Boris bike ride round Hyde Park in beautiful sunshine, plus a 3min sprint from the Tube to check-in at Heathrow airport while cutting it fine en route to Switzerland

This is the sorry sight I was after 15km – only just over a third of the distance we’ll go on Sunday

March 6 –  15km cross-country skiing (we are in the Engadine now) followed by near collapse. Maybe it’s the altitude

March 7 – 22km of cross-country skiing: barely more than half of the distance we’re in for on Sunday but it still took nearly 2hr30

Before our half-marathon this morning we had a lesson (PJ’s idea – thank goodness one of us has some sense), to knock some proper technique into us.

Nora, our young Swiss instructor, who has completed the marathon in 2hr19min, began with the basics after watching me skate up and down a few times outside the Langlauf Centre at Pontresina.

Mostly, it was about how to push. “Don’t lift your hands above the level of your shoulders, and keep your poles angled backwards – you must never see your ski pole basket,” she said.

“Bring your hands back to the front each time you have finished pushing, don’t take a break there – if you take a break, make it at the front.” She added that extra power could be gained by releasing the grip at the end of each push and therefore making the push longer.

Then, it was about when to push. To date I had been doing a haphazard combination of double-push (both poles at once) and single (one at a time), depending on gradient and speed.

But actually there are several official types of push/step, the “two-one” (push with both poles every other step), the “one-one” (push with both poles every step, saying to yourself ‘sticks, ski, sticks, ski’) and the “asymmetrical” (push with both poles every other step, but at an angle, for going up cambered hills).

So what was that one-pole-at-a-time push I was doing yesterday?

“That,” Nora said with disdain, “is the lady-step.”

She conceded, however, that the lady-step can be useful for hills. There is a correct way of doing it, single-poling at the same time as the opposite ski, with the pole parallel to the ski.

Despite all these excellent tips, and a marked improvement in technique, after today’s post-lesson, 22km-long practice I was ready to drop. And I don’t think it’s just down to the altitude…

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26/2/13 – Engadine marathon: 12 days to go

Only 42km to go… Racers set off in last year’s Engadine cross-country marathon

I am 10 days into my fitness regime in preparation for the Engadine marathon, a 26-mile cross-country ski race I’m doing for the first time on Sunday, March 10.

I entered last year but tripped over while out running a month beforehand and hurt my shoulder, so I went as a spectator instead.

This time I’m all booked up to go and it doesn’t look as though I will get out of it.

This didn’t really register until just under a month before race day, at which point I vowed to ‘do something’ every day – especially when I saw that among the other British racers entered are certain Middleton siblings who made impressive times in the much longer Vassaloppet last year.

Anyway, here’s how my preparation has turned out so far…

February 13 – 1hr yoga at lunchtime (ought to start gently, I reasoned…).

February 14 – 2 x circuits of Hyde Park on a Boris bike at lunchtime, as fast as I could, starting at Victoria (about 45min in total). It was warm, sunny, busy and pretty hazardous: I had a near-head-on with a Boris-tourist who didn’t know we Brits are used to riding on the left.

February 15 – In Scotland for a long weekend after getting the overnight sleeper train to Inverness. About 2hr of downhill skiing at Aviemore (little effort, much fun) and 90min walking up Cairngorm on skins (much effort, just as much fun).

February 16 – 90min of cross-country skiing on the excellent trails of Clashindarroch Forest on borrowed skating skis and boots, and a 50min hike to the top of the Cairngorm funicular on foot.

February 17 – Another 90min of cross-country skiing in Clashindarroch Forest – quite strenuous due to slushy conditions, and excellent sunny weather, so base-tan benefited, too.

February 18 – 1hr horse ride (more work for the horse).

The Boris: not just a way from A to B

February 19 – 2 x circuits of Hyde Park, as before and probably a bit faster; no near-collisions.

February 20 – 1 x circuit of Hyde Park on a Boris bike (25min).

February 21 – 4.2km on treadmill at lunchtime (25min).

February 22 – 1hr horse ride and a 20min walk. Does lots of vacuuming count?

February 23 – Zero! But a bit of stretching.

February 24 – 1hr fast walk.

February 25 – 45min fast walk and 30min run outdoors.

I’m aiming for more of the same over the next days. And while it’s hardly transforming me into a Middletonesque langlauf machine, hopefully it’ll be enough to make the race a bearable (at worst) or brilliant (at best) four-ish hours. Wish me luck!

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30/12/12 – A cheap, handy hotel in Geneva

Last week I travelled from Geneva to London after a few days’ Christmas skiing. I needed to be at my desk in Victoria by 10am on 27/12. When I booked my flight on 4 December, the cheapest fares to Gatwick, both around £100, were last thing on 26/12 or at 7am on 27/12, both with Easyjet.

After totting up train and taxi fares to get me home in the Surrey countryside in the middle of the night, and other logistics, I opted for the 7am, plus a hotel in Geneva on 26/12.

My £100 room in central Geneva

Tripadvisor users pointed me towards the Manotel Kipling, near the station, and I paid £100 for a double (split between two of us), through one of the booking sites (booking.com or hotels.com, I think). As the trains from town to airport take less than 10 minutes and start well before dawn, there was no need to pay a premium for an airport hotel.

On 26/12 I caught a train to Geneva from Sion (SF46/£32 single) at 6.06pm, arriving about 8pm. I exited the city/boats side, and used the maps on boards near the trams outside the station (which is under refurbishment) to find Rue de la Navigation, as I’d forgotten to print a map.

…and from another angle

It took me about three minutes to walk to the Manotel Kipling, turning left out of the station and following the main road for about 250m, before turning right into Navigation.

I’d had a picnic, but I could see there were cheap-and-cheerful places to eat, many Asian and Middle Eastern, on the way. A couple of the side-streets in this part of town are seedy but you don’t need to walk down those to reach the hotel.

The male receptionist was friendly and professional. I checked out at the same time as checking in, paying my SF3.30 taxe de sejour (tourist tax), in return for which I was given a travel card, which covered my morning fare to the airport.

The bathroom was nice; there were even weighing scales. Not sure a great idea to test them out after Christmas

For £50 each, room 209 was a winner. The temperature was spot on, the bed large and comfy, the carpet and furnishings fresh, new, attractive and restful and the lighting well designed.

The suitcase stand was solid and large, there was at least one full-length mirror, I was able to let in extra air by opening the window and there was a Christmas sweet on each pillow.

The smartly striped, wooden-floored bathroom was bright and clean, with good soap, a decent-sized bath and shower, plus weighing scales.

Tea and coffee – they must get a few English guests

Wi-Fi was free, strong and simple to access. The street outside was quiet.

All this makes it, I reckon, a good bet if you’re on the way to or from the Alps on an early or late and need a convenient, good value hotel.

The negatives: the fridge wasn’t turned on (to store my following day’s picnic rather than raid the mini-bar), and a requested 5.30am wake-up call never sounded.

My own alarm did, and I was on the 5.59am train to the airport (arrival 6.06am), only to find a giant queue for security (“less than 15 minutes”, promised a screen: it was more like 25), which had me worried about missing the flight.

I didn’t, and here I am back in grey, rainy England, with the surprise of an on-time Gatwick Express for the same price as the Southern Trains (my usual carrier) trip.

Apparently, until 1 January a single fare on the GatExp has been reduced to £13.50 from £18.90 because engineering works are making it S-L-O-W-E-R than its usual half hour.

A polite, orderly Swiss queue

Which, I confirm, after spending nearly 50 minutes chugging into London, it certainly is…

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27/12/12 – The new Grilleses chair lift, Anzere, in pictures

Anzere, the sunny little Valaisan resort where I have skied almost every year since I was three, has a new lift. A few months ago I showed you some pictures of it being built.

Now it is fully in action and it’s no exaggeration to report that this four-seater chair, Grilleses-Conches, travelling 500 vertical metres mid-mountain in five minutes, has transformed Anzere’s skiing. Compared to before, the area (previously about 50km of pistes) seems half as large again, and the speed of the thing, compared with the t-bar it has replaced, feels supersonic.

I’ve ridden up and skied down a couple of dozen times over the past few days. Here’s what I’ve found…

Introducing the new-look Grilleses…

Regulars in Anzere are more used to t-bars, such as this one, Les Luys. But now these two-man drag lifts are in a minority

My first glimpse of the base station

It starts considerably lower than the t-bar it has superseded

They have kept the lift man’s hut from the old t-bar, complete with fully functioning clock, which the new lift station lacks

Ready for a first ascent

There’s a nice view if you turn round…

…and to the left are pretty chalets, previously much more secluded, but maybe now going up in value thanks to true doorstep skiing

The right-hand half of this mayen (place to go traditionally with cows in May, if I understand correctly), directly under the lift, has been modernised

You can see the old t-bar hut on the right of this picture. The chair takes a route a little to the east of the old t-bar line

This cow shed is near the top. You can see the top of the telecabin on the left of the picture, on the horizon by the mast

A double pylon! Don’t panic, it doesn’t seem to get tangled up with Le Bate, a longstanding two-seater chair

Near the top, with the Four Valleys (Verbier, Nendaz, etc) looking very close the other side of the Rhone Valley

The top station

This is the original piste back down, which remains intact and lengthened, top and bottom…

…but there is also a brand new run, the other side, classified black, called Chaux de Duez. We used to ski it as an off-piste run – along with much of the terrain either side

The chair has made swathes off off-piste more accessible. This is good, but I suspect it’ll be tracked more quickly than before, when these bits of mountain were less visible and with less obvious access

Much of the best terrain accessible from Grilleses can be seen here. But there’s more behind me (taking the photo), and over that ridge…

Anzere’s best mountain restaurant, Tsalan, is on one of the half-dozen piste runs you can now do from Grilleses. This week I have been eating a plate of help-yourself salad, with beef, prawns and lettuce, priced by weight. So far I’ve paid between SF7.40 and SF9.30 per meal. A prime example of cheap Switzerland

This is the brand new run down from Tsalan to Grilleses chair. It’s lined with snow cannons – which have finally also been connected up on the original Grilleses run. Progress!

A final view from the top, previously a spot on the mountain only visited by an occasional off-pister

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17/12/12 – Flow State, the latest Warren Miller film: the verdict

Powder skiing in the Bernese Oberland

It wasn’t the outrageous big air, the fearsome steeps, the 1,000ft rag-doll falls or the ravishing powder turns that will stick in my mind from the ski film I saw last week.

During the 90 minutes of Flow State, the latest Warren Miller release (the man himself is in his 80s and someone else makes the films these days), there was footage from Alaska, Hokkaido, Lake Tahoe, Squaw Valley, Kaprun, Utah and California. Even modest little Murren in the Bernese Oberland, where I usually go in January to race the Inferno, got a look-in.

None of these was as mesmerising as the closing five or so minutes, shot in Svalbard, in the far north of Norway, during the 24-hour daylight of the Arctic summer.

The view that made me catch my breath was shot from high up the mast of the Arctica II, a heavy-duty, 62ft sailing boat, showing the bow moving slowly and deliberately through intricate slabs of sea-ice.

Jackie Paaso and Aurelien Ducroz go boat-skiing in Svalbard

This was a more intrepid version of the Norwegian boat-skiing trip I went on in April quite a few degrees farther south.

For Flow State’s pair of ski tourers (Jackie Paaso, the only female pro skier in the film, and Aurelien Ducroz), on the agenda were Polar bears, walruses, first ascents and skiing under the midnight sun as well as climbing on skins from fjord to peak.

Give me snow, any day

The footage was unmissable, and I wanted to join them – though I might not have been brave enough to leap into the sub-zero sea or go water-skiing on a pair of K2s.

Flow State (see the trailer here) is a mixture of brief clips of astonishing daredevil footage, some of it frenetically jumbled together, and around a dozen five-or-so-minute “stories”, when the pace slows and two or three skiers or boarders go on some kind of mission.

Apart from the Norway foray, my favourite missions were:

• The current and former World Cup racers Tommy Moe, Daron Rahlves and Marco Sullivan fishing, rafting and heliskiing in Alaska.
• Another trio blasting down the powder-laden avalanche barriers in Niseko, Japan, to the soundtrack of a Japanese drumming band.
• Vintage footage of the US Army’s 10^th Mountain Division learning to ski and survive in wintry Colorado – and fascinating interviews with some of the original members, who became lifelong ski fanatics.
• Travis Ganong, another World Cup skier, demonstrating perfect, effortless powder technique while heliskiing in Alaska.

It was also great to peer through the stone arches of Murren’s Allmendhubel funicular  and see a local guy, Sascha Schmid, and a Canadian big-mountain skier, Hugo Harrison, sashaying down in powder.

At one point the commentary inferred that they were skiing down the Eiger. Maybe they were, but I wasn’t convinced, and I think I spotted another tiny error in this section: something or someone was said to be “more local than Lederhosen”, but as far as I know, that Alpine suede legwear really belongs in Austria and Germany (Swiss traditional men’s clothing looks more like this).

The soundtrack was excellent, and high-energy, but those of you who know me won’t be surprised that I’d have liked to have seen more Swiss music, which did feature in the film for a few seconds – I’m not sure where they found it in midwinter in Muerren, but it looked like, possibly, the Alpenruh, where the pair seemed to be staying.

I also loved seeing the old-school freestylers, Jonny Moseley and Bob Howard, dressed up in crazy technicolour 80s garments, complete with big hair to go with their big air and ballet moves.

Aurelien Ducroz in Svalbard (picture by Alex Witkowicz/WME)

In fact most of the skiers in Flow State wore bold, bright clothing, which, I hope, means I am on trend this winter with my own pink trousers and orange jacket (to be revealed in a future post, I expect). Just a shame I’m not quite up to those double back-flips and vertical faces…

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5/11/12: A cheap hot wine recipe

Vin chaud. Gluhwein. Vin brule. Hot wine. It’s the time of year when I think about making some, and look forward to ordering the first of the season – preferably in a cosy ski hut while it’s blizzarding outside.

At the Nederhut in Obergurgl, where I’ll be holidaying next month, it’s thick, dark, aromatic and very sticky if spilt. It comes in an earthenware mug that takes some knocking over, even with scores of merry après-skiers stamping on the tables.

Elsewhere I’ve drunk it from polystyrene cups, hot-chocolate vessels and heat-proof glasses with an impractical metal handle that burns your fingers (I think this was in Italy, where style won over substance).

Only occasionally do I find one that’s too acidic, too sweet, too bitter or lukewarm.

My wine pan. Orange shows size

In Anzere, Switzerland, where I’ve skied since I was little, the tourist office hands out free hot wine on Monday nights in the village square, following a descente aux flambeaux by the ski school.

It’s one of the best I have tasted anywhere – and it’s usually white, as this is what’s grown mostly in the district.

At Central Sports, in the same village, Rene Schick, the owner, can sometimes be found handing out a very similar-tasting hot white wine to customers.

As well as being lighter than hot red wine, white has the advantage of being less messy. Which is why, when I last had a winter party, I asked Rene for his recipe. This is it:

Cinnamon sticks, oranges and a few little bits of star anise

6 litres white wine
4 litres water
3 oranges, cut into chunks, peel left on
8 cinnamon sticks
8 star anise flowers
Half a kilo of honey and/or sugar
…and a good dash of dark rum, if you like

Heat the wine and water, then add the rest of the ingredients and continue to heat for a while, stirring now and then. I kept mine on the heat for about an hour, very hot but not boiling.

Wine-box wine is fine

You don’t need to use fancy wine – something like Muscadet, Soave or ‘table wine’ is fine (or cheap Fendant, if you’re making it in Switzerland). I used wine-box stuff, which worked fine.

Other essentials are a large saucepan and a ladel. I ladel the wine into a jug to pass around.

Polystyrene cups are a bit nasty – once I’ve used up the proper mugs I have in the house I give people large, substantial plastic glasses – not the tiny, flippy ones – then I half-fill them, so people can hold them without burning their fingers.

I can’t remember how many people this recipe ‘feeds’, but you can add more of all the ingredients once it’s flowing. None except the oranges will go off it you don’t use them up. Just don’t forget to add the corresponding amount of water as you top it up…

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26/10/12 – Bodo’s Schloss, London’s new Austrian bar: the verdict

The logo for Bodo’s Schloss is a goat wearing a bell. Not very Kensington

Last night I went the opening night of a new bar in Kensington. Not my usual habit, but this was a place I was itching to see.

This was Bodo’s Schloss, decked out, I had read, like an Austrian ski lodge, complete with dirndl- and lederhosen-clad staff and a telecabin as a DJ booth. Now, I’m a bit of a veteran of the real thing, so I wanted to check it out.

Wood, wood, everywhere. And chamois horns and cow bells

Bodo’s Schloss (nothing to do with that king of mountain-euro-pop DJ Bobo) is in the basement of the Royal Garden Hotel, replacing a casino.

According to online reports such as this one, the people behind it – Piers Adam and Nick House – also masterminded Mahiki, Whisky Mist and the Punch Bowl, none of which I know but all of which probably sound rather cooler to most people.

Inspired! Can anyone identify this button lift?

At 7.15pm there was no queue at the street-level entrance to the right of the main hotel (it’s free to get in till 10pm; thereafter £15), where smiley female staff are stationed, wearing fur coats over their dirndls.

The reception area (coats £1 per item) has a knockout pine aroma, a film of a button lift in action keenitely slotted behind a window frame and a line of skis from circa 1970.

Four privileged pairs

In we went, down a few steps (with railings made of wagon wheels), and pulled up a fur-seated stool at the bar.

Over a glass of Petra Unger Q Gruner Veltliner (£6.90 for a 175ml glass; the cheapest white is a Spanish viura/chardonnay at £4.20 a glass/£17 a bottle), we surveyed the scene.

It makes you want to yodel… but the music is more London than Lermoos

A big effort has gone into decor. A waiter told us most of it comes from Austria, and I believe it.

There are sledges on the walls; light fittings made of antlers; wood, wood, everywhere; two fireplaces stacked with logs; a chamois head; giant cow bells overhanging the bar; cosy lighting; an ibex sculpture; chairs with backs in the shape of deer-heads, and rustic boards on wrought-iron wall-fittings to indicate table reservations.

Can anyone find this on a map?

The ‘Toiletten’ are marked with jaunty Austrian writing, their walls painted with names, funnily enough, of two of my favourite ski resorts, Obergurgl and Soelden.

There’s a poem on another wall that I could half-translate, and, bafflingly, another name, ‘Innsburg’. Did they mean Innsbruck?

The barmen lent us their hats

Most tables were taken by couples, chattering groups of 20 to 30somethings and a few parties of older blokes trying not to stare at the blonde, plait-haired waitresses in checked dirndls or short-ish lederhosen – definitely the Austrian variety, rather than Swiss traditional dress.

Ninety per cent of the waitresses, the friendly Hungarian barman told us, are Swedish, and though he didn’t think there was anyone from the Alps front-of-house, the head chef, Franz, is Austrian.

They’ve even got hold of a schnapps ski

I was impressed that, as I’ve seen in Austria, the barmen wear shirts (some with braces, some with hats, too) while the managers wear a jacket (again, decidedly Austrian, rather than Swiss).

Behind the bar are steins (litre glasses for beer), china ski boots (fill it with a rum cocktail for £100 to share between up to eight) and a decent array of schnapps.

Antler wall-lights and wrought-iron hooks. Unheimlich gut!

‘Winter season’ cocktails (from £8.50) are named after ski runs (not all in Austria): Lauberhorn, Vallee Blanche, Hahnenkamm, Harakiri, Madloch and Corbet’s Couloir. ‘House’ cocktails include the St Bernard, which contains Mozart liqueur.

Draught beer (£2.80) is Stiegl or Schremser, Austrian brands, and Erdinger Dunkel, that tasty German ski-slope staple, comes in bottles. Plenty of Austrian wines are in the mix, towards the pricier end. And tap water, unlike in many places in Austria, is free.

Perfectly executed spinach dumplings

The most extravagant drink is the ice castle (£5,000), which I gather is a limitless supply of the bar’s signature cocktail (including Ciroc vodka, passionfruit, creme de peche and Dom P), served in some sort of ice vessel – which hasn’t arrived yet, so it’s not available for the moment.

You can download a copy of the drinks menus here.

Apple strudel, no icing sugar spared

When a table became free we glanced through the food menu.

It’s so full of things you’d find up a mountain that it felt odd not to have to ‘translate’ the prices. Sauerkraut £4.50; goulasch soup £5.50; spaetzle £3; Wiener schnitzel with potato and cucumber salad £16.50 (the priciest dish). So would the proof be in the, er, dumpling?

Our empty schnapps glasses

It turned out it was. Spinach dumpling with grated cheese (£7.50), served in a very new-looking cast-iron pan, was as meltingly satisfying as the last one I had, in the Hohe Mut restaurant in Obergurgl.

Classic salad with chicken strips (£9) was good, too, and generous on the toasted pumpkin seeds. Apple strudel (£5), which I requested without custard but with ice-cream (for which they charged an extra £1), had the requisite sultanas and melt-in-the-mouth apple, though the pastry was a bit tough. Overall, nicht schlecht!

This is what happened after the schnapps

There was a bonus to come, when, at 9.30pm, everyone in the place was presented with a schnapps – a decent-sized one, and not the throat-searing, petrol-fumed variety but something quite smooth.

A bell rang, we all sipped or downed, and out of the kitchen marched a five-piece band, playing “Ein Prosit, ein Prosit, der Gemuetlichkeit” – which was brilliant until it segued into YMCA.

Translations, please! Something to do with Pisa and its tower, a fisherman and a worm, and then I am lost

By now it was standing-room only, Bodo’s Schloss was segueing from apres-ski to nightclub, and after a second free schnapps it was time to pay the bill (£57.62 for four glasses of wine, three plates of food and a 15pc service charge) and step out into the October night for a Boris bike ride to Waterloo and a train home.

I’ll be back, and now I know it’s properly Alpine, with the trappings and trimmings, I’ll dig out one of my dirndls for the occasion.

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23/10/12 – Leukerbad, where 40 is the magic age

Olden days Leukerbad, with track to the Gemmi pass winding up behind; picture from the thermal springs trail

Few ski towns are a pleasure to visit year-round. Examples are Zermatt and Chamonix, which have busy mountaineering scenes and famous peaks and glaciers that ‘grand tourists’ like to admire. Last month I went to another place I’d spend time in any month of the year – the Swiss resort of Leukerbad.

Just inside the German-speaking part of the Valais, it sits in a cliff-fringed bowl up a side-valley between the Rhone Valley towns Sierre and Visp. Two things feature strongly in its history – avalanches and thermal baths.

The Via Ferrata on the Gemmi. No thanks!

Avalanches persistently wrought destruction until someone thought to rebuild the town in a less exposed spot, in 1719, and put up protection walls (1829). Now they’re not an issue.

As to the baths, they’re mentioned in documents from the 14^th century, but the Romans were onto them the previous millennium. In the 16^th century a local bishop raised their profile when he took to conducting political and clerical business, semi-submerged, with European statesmen.

In 1556 public baths were built for the poor, and visitors to Leukerbad over the next centuries included Goethe, Mark Twain, Picasso and the writer James Baldwin – probably the first black man to come to the valley, in the 1950s (his essay, Stranger in the Village, recalls his time there).

The contents of Leukerbad’s 40-year-old thermal spring water, as shown on a board on the thermal springs trail

Every day 3.9 million litres of thermal water flows from springs all over town, feeding 30 thermal pools – four of which are public baths; the rest mostly in hotels.

When the water comes out, it’s about the same age as me.

It works like this. Rainwater sinks into the Torrent massif (2,300-3,000m) – where the ski area is, east of town – trickling, dripping and gushing through cracks in the rock down to 500m below sea level. En route it picks up minerals.

This graph on the thermal springs trail shows guest numbers increasing as more baths are built

After being given a roasting while flowing around underground channels, it rises back up another route, seeing daylight again at 1,400m in Leukerbad, at a steaming maximum of 51 degrees centigrade, 40 years after it started life as a shower.

Avalanches, earthquakes, floods and landslides affect the rate of flow (900 litres a minute) – as does building activity, so locals need to take care they don’t dig up a source.

When doctors prescribed all-day bathing, patients dined on floating trays. Picture from the thermal springs trail

So what’s the point of sitting in it? The theory is that if you soak in the water, the minerals do you good – changing the balance of ions (according to the dictionary, a ‘gaseous particle’) in the skin; soothing rheumatoid and neurological complaints; and speeding up recovery after a trauma or accident (these are chemical effects).

Swimming in it while wearing fins, or doing something called ‘wet-vest aqua jogging’ (yes, really), are among the ‘training therapies’ used in rehabilitation (these are mechanical effects).

The warmth, for reasons easy to understand, is relaxing.

Switzerland’s sources

Another chemical effect is a diuretic one – it helps you ‘go’. But beware actually drinking the stuff – apparently a few glasses might give you the runs.

Leukerbad expanded dramatically from the 1960s to the 1990s, when the number of overnight stays rose from 200,000 a year to more than 1.1m. During this period, when doctors prescribed a spell in Leukerbad for all sorts of ills, health insurers would pick up the bill not only for the treatment, but for hotel stays, meals and even wine, often for months at a time.

When insurance companies tightened up, paying just for the treatment, the tally dipped, and today there are just over 800,000 stays each year.

You can walk above the water as well as sit in it – this is the walkway in the Dala gorge

Doctors used to advise patients to spend the entire day submerged, and bathers would eat their meals on floating trays. This has been revived today as a bit of a gimmick in the form of things like champagne breakfasts in the water (other innovations include cinema nights).

The baths now range from the family-friendly Burgerbad (entry SF22/18/13 for adult/youth/child), the largest themal spa complex in the Alps, to the Rehabilitation Centre, which started life as the Institute for Paraplegics in 1962.

Each of the sources has a name

Today’s wisdom says you’re meant to go in for 20 minutes, followed by a spell in the relaxation room to let your body absorb the minerals before another ‘dose’. You can repeat this all day if you like.

I spent a relaxing couple of hours at the Alpentherme (SF23/18), both in the baths and in the ‘Valaisan sauna village’ (see etiquette for the sauna, here).

I was just as impressed by the rest of Leukerbad, which has a year-round population of 1,630, beds for all budgets – 6,900 in apartments and 1,500 in hotels – and 50 restaurants, including several within an easy mountain walk.

The town is spread across the hillside, with beautiful as well as bland buildings, a lovely, mostly pedestrian lane at its heart, lined with ancient chalets, and a cheerful, rushing stream.

Veg on view

In summer and autumn you can admire lovingly tended vegetable and flower gardens at every turn, which aren’t hidden behind hedges or fences like they are at home. There are festivals from music to literature to shepherding, and I was sorry to miss a weekend of Swiss ‘Laendlermusik’ by just a few hours.

There are walking paths galore, both from town and up on the Gemmi (a pass at the top of the cliffs to the west of town), in summer and winter. During my visit I followed the excellent and gentle marked ‘thermal springs trail’ from the centre of town, the highlight of which is a metal walkway bolted to the cliffs of a spectacular gorge. Lining the route are information boards with fascinating photos, diagrams and statistics about the baths, some with roaring waterfalls nearby.

Here’s what I missed by a few hours

If you’re there for longer, there’s limitless walking, both summer and winter, including a path from the top of the new Gemmi cable car that goes all the way to Kandersteg. And the skiing? Well, it’s smallish and south-ish facing, a bit like Anzere, where I’ve spent a lot of my skiing life. I reckon I’ll be back to check it out and rebalance those ions again.

For more, see leukerbad.ch, and read this entertaining article by James Cove of Planet Ski, about his experience of a ‘Roman-Irish bath’ in Leukerbad, including pictures of the different baths.

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