The recorded welcome and safety-instruction message on National Express airport coaches ends with the invitation to "sit back and enjoy the ride". It occurred to me as the 7. Certainly it became evident on this trip that the only passengers having a good time were those whose eyes were closed and mouths open.
The very idea of enjoying a ride on public transport is hopelessly out of time, of course. Probably some revived rail services and luxury cruises are the exception. But the rule — now that travel has become so commonplace and banal — is that the "ride" is something to be endured rather than enjoyed. Or so I thought, until the Snowjet aircraft on which I was flying to Switzerland began its descent into Sion airport. Above Visp the valley is quite narrow and when the pilot pitched the four-engined BAe jet into a sharp U-turn it suddenly seemed a lot narrower, thanks to the stunning mountain ranges rearing up 4, metres on either side.
Just as it became clear that the manoeuvre would succeed, the Matterhorn stood to attention on the port side. The turn completed, the aircraft dropped toward the remarkable twin hill-top castles of Sion. Flying into Sion remains an unusual way of accessing the ski destinations of Switzerland's Valais canton.
Swissair flew there from the UK for a while, but gave up the route because of recurrent bad weather at Sion. A mischievous Swiss tourism official suggested to me that the real reason why pilots so frequently diverted to Geneva was that most of them lived in that city. Although Snowjet's flight is now in its third year of operation, it still has only three flights to Sion each week.
There is a major stronghold of British skiing at Verbier, just south-east of Lake Geneva above Martigny; there is another above Visp at Zermatt, a destination we have favoured since before the Matterhorn was climbed. But the 80km stretch between those two places is largely unfamiliar territory for us, even though Crans-Montana — on the other, south-facing side — is a reference point in the early history of British skiing. Recent developments, however, have highlighted this area. The continuing popularity of Verbier, plus its unattractively high prices, have encouraged the quest for "back-door" resorts that give access to its highly regarded Four Valleys ski domain.
