Notes on … Skiing in Switzerland

There’s a myth in the Spectator office, which I’ve never discouraged, that I’m Yorkshire’s answer to Franz Klammer — a veteran ski ace who likes nothing better than to have himself helicoptered to remote peaks in search of deep, virgin powder. But myth it is, I’m afraid: your business columnist is fat, 58 and was never fast on skis or any other form of self-propulsion, even in his youth.

So you might think I’m the wrong man to be telling you about my favourite Swiss winter-sports station, which is the picture-book village of Wengen in the Bernese Oberland. This, after all, is the place where ski-racing was invented by British sportsmen in the 1920s, and is still home to the muscular Downhill Only Club. It’s a place for thrusting, not for pottering along with a hipflask and your skis not quite parallel.

Most popular

Ian O’Doherty

Ireland is on a knife edge

But never mind; it is also a place of perfect Alpine charm, not least because it is small (pop.