When I skied the Val Gardena last month, the talk was all about London. That’s where the World Travel Market is held each November — a four-day frenzy when the UK travel industry sorts out its priorities for the coming year.
This time round, Val Gardena reported a sudden upsurge of interest from British ski companies. If even half the inquiries are turned into holiday programmes, then it looks as though a lot more of us will be skiing here next winter.
And no wonder: it’s staggeringly beautiful. The local Dolomite limestone rises out of the ground in sheer ochre cliffs and forms not so much peaks as mighty citadels of rock, thousands of feet tall.
Film-makers regularly use the landscape to wow their audiences — most notably in the Stallone movie Cliffhanger — and when you see them at first hand, they are even more impressive.
Not that you need to be an expert to enjoy the pistes. Quite the opposite. All those crags and buttresses rise out of meadows, and it’s over their gently undulating surface that most of the groomed runs unfurl. Admittedly, they get steeper in the final drop, into the villages on the valley floor, but for the most part they’re wide and confidence-boosting. If you ski only once a winter, and don’t want to spend that week in fear of your life, you’ll have a ball.
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Locally, the pistes range over both sides of the valley, above its main villages, Selva, Santa Cristina and Ortisei. But this is only the start. Set around the central Sella massif is an intricate web of lifts and runs that offers 290 miles of on-piste skiing and connects several quite separate villages and valleys. The more you explore, the bigger the playground seems to get, and the sense of being able to range across a whole region — rather than on a series of identikit slopes — is one of many attractions of this corner of the Alps.
Of course, none of this would matter if the price were not right — and that’s where the resorts of the Dolomites score so highly. They’re not dirt cheap, but they are noticeably less expensive than the likes of Val d’Isère and Courchevel, and offer an experience that is in some ways better.
Good-quality, modestly priced food and wine are where you’ll notice the difference most, but it extends to private ski lessons, too. I had a relaxed and instructive two-hour private lesson with Oswald Runggaldier, of the Selva Ski School (scuolasciselva.com). The price? Just £62 (£86 in the busiest weeks). In France, you can pay almost £150 for the same experience. No wonder operators are so interested. We should be, too.
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Independent travel: fly to Verona with British Airways (0844 493 0777, ba.com) or Flybe (0871 700 2000, flybe.com). Carrentals.co.uk has a week’s hire of a medium-sized car from £171. Or try Kayak.co.uk. In Selva, the new four-star Nives (00 39 0471 773329, hotel-nives.com) has doubles from £116pp, half-board.
Tour operators: the family specialist Esprit (01252 618300, www.espritski.com) has two-room suites at the Wiesenheim chalet, in Selva, arriving on February 7, for £325pp, based on a family of four sharing. Or try Thomson (0871 971 0578, thomsonski.co.uk) or Neilson (0844 879 8155, neilson.co.uk).
Further information: suedtirol.info.