Lech

Despite having been a skier for over 20 years my husband had never been to Austria so I decided that it was time to rectify this and Lech was chosen. Lech has been described to me a as the resort the Courchevel aspires to be but never will be, and as Tim has been to the Three Valleys on numerous occasions it seemed a sensible choice. The only draw back was that as we wanted to stay in a Chalet Hotel to give Alistair the greatest chance of meeting other people his age it meant flying from Gatwick. We drove up the night before and stayed at the Mercure which is well placed with frequent shuttle buses to the terminals. It was the weekend that the snow hit the UK badly, but we got out with just a 2 hour delay! We flew with Monarch and paid for extra legroom seats that were well worth the £15.00 extra each way as even Tim who is 6'6" had plenty of room and sat by the window for the first time in years.

The landing in to Innsbruck was a little bouncy and there were many oohs and aahs from the passengers. Innsbruck is a small airport but due to recent improvements is reasonably well served both air and land side and we were soon on our way. The transfer to Lech is short at just 1hr 45mins.

Lech is a beautiful resort both by day and night with traditional style buildings. The resort is linked to Oberlech, Zurs and Zug both by the frequent free bus service and through the ski runs including Der Weise Ring (The White Ring) - a ski circuit connecting Lech, Zurs, Oberlech and Zug over which a timed race is completed every year. St Anton and St Christoph are reached by the free bus service and by off piste runs which should only to be attempted with the assistance of a ski guide. St Anton and St Christoph have blue, red and black runs but in Lech and Zurs they have blue and red runs and ski routes which are marked runs which are not groomed or patrolled and these are graded medium or extreme. We did not see many snowboarders in Lech although there were noticably more in St Anton. All the runs are well served by a good number of lifts which are mainly chairlift's and most of these are heated which was a real treat. The ski school is well thought of with a large number of English speaking instructors although we did not have any lessons this time.

There are also a good selection of slope side restaurants and bars which include a Frozen Ice Bar but I think my favourites were the Kriegeralpe and the Balmalp in Lech and the Hospiz Alm in St Christoph which is full of celebrity guest photographs and has a slide down to the bathroom (don't worry there are stairs to get back up again). In the town many of the hotels have bars outside which are good fun and heated with some great patio heaters that made it feel even more festive. There are a good selection of hotel and independent restaurants and many are award winning and one or two even have Michelin stars!

On our night off we tried the S'Rivier at the Elizabeth Hotel and had the most amazing Ox Steaks that were perfectly cooked (Alistair enjoyed his Pike too). The resort also has a few night clubs (Alistair tried Archiv which he liked as the drinks were reasonably priced) and several hotels offer entertainment - either traditional music or other live bands or pianists. There are many well placed hotels and I managed to visit several including the Arlberg (a favourite of Princess Diana when she was alive), the Krone, the Berghof, the Gasthof Post, and the Monzabon to name a few. Our Chalet Hotel Alexandra offered large comfortable rooms, good food and a wellness area.

Other activities include shopping, sleigh rides, heli-skiing, snowshoeing, cross country skiing, winter hiking, bowling, ice skating, curling, sports centre, museums, Icefall Climbing, toboggan run, snowtubing and game feeding/watching. Until April 2012 the Antony Gormley "Horizon Field" installation is in Lech with 100 life size, solid cast iron figures of the human body spread over 150sq km forming a horizontal line at 2,039m above sea level is in the Voralberg - we played spot the statue from the chairlift!

I am sure we will be back.