Mother’s Day getaway
Sexy spa from £350pn: R&R can be found at Brimstone Hotel and Spa in Langdale in the Lake District.
There is a pool, chill-out areas and Pure Alchemy treatments.
Suites have balconies, woodburning stoves and feature-bathing.
Includes breakfast. See brimstonehotel. co.uk.
Paddle to the pub for £29pp: Make a toast to mum during a Paddle To The Pub trip on the Beaulieu River with New Forest Activities.
This guided canoe trip passes through the Beaulieu River Nature Reserve before stopping at the Master Builder’s pub at Buckler’s Hard (food and drink not included; table reservations required). £29 adult,
£16 child. Head to thenewforest.co.uk.
Tea in the valley from
£26pp: Llangoed Hall is an elegant country house hotel in the Wye Valley.
Guests are treated to finger sandwiches, scones and patisseries with fruit preserve and clotted cream.
Champagne or gin and tonic upgrades are £36pp. Go to llangoedhall.co.uk;
01874 754525.
Give her a break for £339:
THE bar is open, the music pump- ing and the apres ski vibe is in full effect, which is all rather odd because I haven’t even made it to the mountains yet.
I am in the pub car aboard the Alpen Express, the most eco-friendly way to get to the Alps.
Skiers wary of their carbon footprint will be stunned to learn up to two-thirds of all emissions associated with the sport are created by travel to the mountains.
So hopping on a train can help reduce pollution, as rail travel releases 10 times fewer emissions than flying and 20 times less than driving.
Plus, on the Alpen Express, you can have a beer, a boogie and a kip along the way.
My journey began on a Friday in January aboard the 11am Eurostar from London St Pancras to Amsterdam, where I picked up the Alpen Express sleeper service at 7pm that evening. The Express route starts in The Hague and loops through Amsterdam, Utrecht, Eindhoven and Cologne before powering through the night to the Austrian Tirol.
There are stops at resorts including Kitzbuhel, Zell
Am See, St Anton and, my destination, the
SkiWelt.
The train is comfortable and fellow travellers are in good cheer.
Hence the party atmosphere in the pub car, although I could escape the oompah-inspired dance music in my overnight berth.
A six-bed couchette might be a bit of a squeeze for half a dozen adults and their gear, but a family with a few young ones would surely enjoy the cosy cabin. I had a slightly broken sleep, waking when the train occasionally stopped in the night, but was raring to go when I arrived in Wörgl at 8am the next morning. From there, it was just a 10-minute taxi ride to my hotel in Hopfgarten, one of the SkiWelt’s eight main villages.
The SkiWelt is a mammoth area, with 90 lifts that carry skiers to 284km of pistes.
The majority of these are split between blues and reds, with just 36km of black runs, so the area is well suited to one-weeka-season skiers who want to look good zipping down intermediate groomers.
As 229km of those runs can be topped up with man-made snow, decent conditions are virtually guaranteed, despite the area’s low altitude. The highest peak is just 1829m. And like the Alpen Express, the SkiWelt is keen to promote its green credentials.
All of its energy is eco-friendly hydropower produced locally, the water used in its chemical-free snow-making is of drinking quality and taken from local Alpine rivers and lakes, where it melts back in the spring.
Heat recovery systems transfer warmth created from the running of its modern lifts to the area’s mountain restaurants and bars. The SkiWelt also installed the world’s first solar-powered lift in 2008.
Arriving in Hopfgarten, I checked in to the stylish Hohe Salve Sportresort hotel, which has a magnificent, heated indoor/ outdoor pool and spa with saunas that are very inviting after a day on the slopes.
Even better, the hotel is right across from the ski hire shop and the lifts, so I dropped off my bags and hit the slopes right away. Two high-speed gondolas had me at the top of the Hohe Salve in