Why I hate skiing - and the Eiffel Tower

I have never skied. When we lived in England, I didn’t have the money. Since we’ve been in France – where skiing is much more Everyman’s sport – I haven’t had the inclination. Or that’s what I say. “It’s cold enough here!” I cry cheerily to those who bid me join then on a ski jaunt. “Why go somewhere where it’s even b----y colder?” They rabbit on about the swish of speed, the appeal of snow, the exhilaration of the mountain tops. I mention the snap of bones, and wave them off.

The truth is, though, that I wouldn’t at all mind having a crack at the slopes if they weren’t, well, slopes. My problem with skiing really isn’t the temperature – I come from Lancashire – but the necessary mountains, for I have the head for heights of a herring. The prospect of the roads up to the ski resorts, with their inevitable sheer plunges, already shrivels vital organs. Let us not even talk of ski-lifts or funiculars and their tendency to travel at inconvenient distances from the Earth’s surface. All this to deliver a wimp way up a mountain, a position which, in turn, isn’t going to enhance his quality of life any.

You don’t need to tell me that children don’t have problems with these things, not even the tiniest girls. Neither do grannies nor, I’m sure, do many nuns. They can all go up mountains and ski down, giggling. I know. I know.

Nor was it ever thus. I used to barrel cars along barrier-free Pyrenean tracks, stride out along Striding Edge, and be unfazed at the top of Notre Dame or the highest conceivable rollercoaster. I had the Captain Sensible approach to irrational fears – of anything, and especially heights: get a grip, pull yourself together, oh for God’s sake, etc. Then, around the time I hit 40, I drove along the Verdon Gorge in upper Provence. The gorge is what Europe has instead of the Grand Canyon, about 16 miles long and 2,500ft straight down in places. It is dramatic, nature on a supernatural scale. And it did for me.

Within a few hundred yards of sidling by the rim of the void, pretty much all of me seized up. I could scarcely move or breathe. I was sweating like … OK, I was sweating a lot. And my hands gripped the wheel so hard that, had you wrenched me out, I’d have come off at the elbows. I stopped in the first lay-by but didn’t get out, for out there opened the void and I thought it might drive me mad. Every sense was scrambled. I used to smoke back then, so I smoked half a packet, and then smoked the other half as I edged along the rest of the gorge at maybe 11mph, tourist traffic piling up merrily behind me. I could tell they were merry by the way they hooted.

I have never been happier to reach anywhere than I was to reach Castellane, first stop after the end of the gorge. I couldn’t believe I’d survived, any more than I could believe that motorists arriving in Castellane after me didn’t seem in the slightest terrified. Or even mildly put out. They talked normally and their legs worked, whereas mine alternately locked solid or gave way like a collapsible giraffe toy. But that was it. Something had snapped. I have been a sad case ever since. I tackle heights only if it’s unavoidable – maniacs threatening to chuck my kids off a cliff, et cetera (and then it would have to be maniacs of serious intent). Mountain roads are envisageable if someone else is driving; otherwise, not.

This is restricting in daily life (“Your ball is on the roof? Say farewell, son, it’s staying there forever”) but more so on holidays, and I’m not talking just skiing. Other haters of heights – a few exist – will know what I mean. The other day, a friend was raving about New Zealand’s South Island, how it’s up, down, staggeringly beautiful; perfect for mountain-trekking, climbing, bungee-jumping and so … quite out of the question. Nearer home, in France, I have recently been humiliated by the Eiffel Tower.

In a twitch of residual masculinity, I bought a ticket for the top. This was stupid: travelling a thousand feet skywards through French engineering full of holes could only be catastrophic. So it proved. As you’ll know, one must change lifts at the tower’s second level for the suppository that shoots visitors up to the third and final stage. This was the longest one minute, 40 seconds in history, in no way shortened by a young English boy – the accent suggested Leeds – asking of his dad why we weren’t going faster.

^{The setting for Anthony Peregrine's recent humiliation (Photo: Getty)}

On exiting the lift in the stratosphere, I lost it. I moved around light-headed, clinging to girders and staring at my feet. Others walked and chatted, unaffected. The small Leeds boy ran to the edge. Ran to the edge! His dad spotted that I seemed to be on the verge of complete systems failure. “All right, mate?” he asked. “Never better,” I said, looking up and trying to appear sane. “They say that, on a clear day, you can see the Isle of Man.”

“Eh?” he said. He turned away, and I leapt for the lift. To those things of which I am certain – death, hangovers and the love of a good dog – I now add a fourth: I will never again ascend the Eiffel Tower.

Rock-climbing and via ferrata – inviting one to walk along rock-faces on iron pegs – are laughably beyond the bounds of the possible, as are vertiginous roads like those encountered this autumn on the island of Elba. Essentially, Elba is all mountain. Flat bits are rare. If a road is not edging a cliff, it is hairpinning directly up to some place where Napoleon rode. (Though short, Bonaparte evidently revelled in heights.) This leaves someone like me at sea level, unless rescued by someone such as guide Nina Casini, for whom sheer drops are a sheer joy. (An Anglo-Elban, she is also a terrific guide. If you’re going, contact her at ninasroom@gmail.com.)

Dependence is, though, diminishing. Sometimes you just say, “No”. In Chamonix, the hotel receptionist wondered whether she might book me a cable-car ride up the Alpine Aiguille du Midi. That was like asking a resident of Tel Aviv how he’d like his bacon cooking. The cable car is 20 minutes up into an alien world, well over 12,000ft high. I declined. “May I ask why?” she said. “Because it’s there,” I said, which cleared things up nicely. I walked into town and did my mountaineering from a café terrace with a beer. I was, though, as jealous as hell of those getting in among the majesty beyond, whether by climbing boot or cable car.

So, no, I’ll not be accepting invitations to go skiing this year, though I’ll not be saying why not; I’d be grateful if you would keep all the above under your hats. I’ll be wrapping up to wander through garrigue, flat forest and small rounded hills from which I cannot fall off. Oh, and, yes – I’ll be saving ££££s. (The kids say I invented all this fear-of-heights nonsense for that very reason. We’ll never know.)