The twisting roads of the European Alps in winter offer memorable views of snow-capped peaks and soaring pines. Come summer, cattle graze on verdant meadows filled with colourful wildflowers. But thousands of miles away in the Andes of north-west Argentina the mountains couldn’t be more different in the middle of a Southern Hemisphere spring. This…
Tag: Mountains
Spring skiing high up in Montgenèvre
Booking a skiing holiday for April involves taking a gamble. You can arrive to sunshine and late-season snow or barren slopes and green fields. My brother Andrew chose well, however, and the slopes of Montgenèvre in France delivered epic pistes amid glorious surroundings. This was the second time that I’d joined my family and friends…
Zell am See: Lake and mountains
Zell am See has masses of appeal. It’s a typical Alpine town with cuckoo clock chalets, a magical lake and glorious mountains. In winter the slopes are the preserve of skiers and boarders, in summer they’re the playground of hikers and bikers. We arrived in town for five days after a sunny July weekend in…
The Blue Mountains, New South Wales
Driving into the Blue Mountains an hour west of Sydney is child’s play compared to navigating the European Alps. Where the latter has worryingly narrow and winding rounds, the Australian range is connected to the city by a string of dual carriageways. They’re not pretty and not particularly environmentally friendly but we were soon seduced…
Skiing in Champagny en Vanoise
A few years back I thought my skiing days were over when Graham announced halfway through a week in Ischgl that flying down mountains strapped to thin bits of metal was not something he considered a particularly safe, let alone enjoyable, way to pass the time. But then family came to my rescue and gave me…
Tenerife: The epic Mount Teide
When the clouds weren’t hovering threateningly over Tenerife we couldn’t miss the island’s magnificent volcano, Mount Teide. Descending from 35,000ft in our Airbus on that first day, we saw it dominating the island that it helped to create, its upper slopes covered in snow. And from our hotel grounds in the resort town of Puerto de…
Japan: The mountains, an onsen and a dramatic waterfall
Japan is a nation of contrasts, as a visit to one of the country’s traditional, steamy onsens illustrates. These are the famous public baths fed by sulphurous hot springs where getting naked is mandatory, something the locals go for with the type of enthusiasm I’d normally associate with outgoing, uninhibited Scandinavians. It’s not the sort…
Norway: Downhill in Geilo
On our last day in Geilo it was time for me to do some alpine skiing. And I couldn’t have chosen a better day. After the snow of the previous day, the skies were a deep blue and the valley looked gorgeous in its new clothes, sparkling in the sunshine. I hired my gear, jumped…
Fat biking around Geilo
A hangover brought on by mixing vodka, red wine and lager was no way to start a day of cycling. I could barely eat breakfast let alone think about exercise, but we’d already hired the bikes and there wasn’t much else to do in Geilo. We trudged out to the main ski area on the…
Norway: Cross-country skiing in Geilo
We’d been in Norway for several days so it was about time we had a go at their favourite winter sport. Geilo is criss-crossed with cross-country skiing tracks and it’s the only form of skiing that Graham will entertain. With the weather forecast looking up, even promising sunshine, we hired our gear and went out…
A walk around Geilo
If nothing else, I slept well. But as we filled up on an ample breakfast in the Dr Holms Hotel, including some of the best meatballs anywhere in the world, I was still thinking that I’d made a big mistake booking Geilo as a winter destination. At the time the village looked as if it…
A walk on Bergen’s mountains
Bergen’s unpredictable weather delivered snow on our second day in town. Admittedly there was just a dusting around our hotel, but we could see that the mountains that encircle the harbour were covered with the stuff. So we decided to visit them after a hearty breakfast. Graham was suffering from a heavy cold while I…
Scotland in the spring: To the top of Cairn Gorm
We’d exhausted ourselves on our Rothiemurchus walk but we didn’t sleep well afterwards. Perhaps it was the light, for the sun sets late and rises early during summer in the Cairngorms. So neither of us had the energy for anything too exhausting, despite a much better weather forecast. After another ample breakfast and a gossip with…
Scotland in the spring: A walk around the Rothiemurchus estate
Aviemore proved a disappointment but a walk around the Rothiemurchus estate restored us on a grey day in the Cairngorms. Fortified by a delicious breakfast of porridge and a fry-up, we left the four West Midlanders talking politics in the hotel restaurant to plan our itinerary on a day that threatened both rain and shine….
Scotland in the spring: Rain at Brodie Castle
The number one challenge of holidaying in the UK is the weather but the Cairngorms in Scotland had been good to us on our first visit. Would we be lucky a second time? Stepping off our dinky British Airways Embraer 170 at Aberdeen, to the soundtrack of helicopters heading for the oil rigs, the drizzle was…