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‘You’re mad!” Caroline the greengrocer said cheerfully when I told her I was going skiing. A reasonable reaction since not so long ago I was shopping on crutches following a hip replacement. My sister’s friends were more concerned: “How old are you? 80? I don’t think this is a good idea. You’ll fall and break something.” My brother, Andrew, 86, decided it was better not to tell anyone.
For at least two decades I’d had a half-buried wish to experience one more ski trip. A final fix of blue sky, frosty air and the exhilaration that comes with finding yourself still intact at the bottom of a snow-covered slope. I was never much good, and hadn’t skied for decades, but that wasn’t the point. At 83, I needed to see if I could still do it. And if I could do it, how about inviting my sister, Kate, one-third of our Old Crones group who encourage each other to do parkrun each week? Then I remembered that, as teenagers, Andrew had joined me on my first ski holiday. That was 67 years ago, but Andrew used to be quite good, so I invited him too. My friend Penny, who is so absurdly young (67, so she says) that she doesn’t really count, was also allowed to come and try her luck with the oldies and practise her German. We all made an effort to get as fit as possible, but none of us had skied for at least 40 years.
Seefeld, in Tirol near Innsbruck, was our chosen destination, as it offers a variety of winter activities – assuming we’d survive our two-hour lesson on the first day (which, to be honest, was all the downhill skiing we had planned) – and is wonderfully free of après-ski malarky. It attracts families rather than partying youngsters, and is typically Austrian, with onion-domed churches and chalet-type houses. Our base was the friendly, family-run Hotel Helga and we ate at a different restaurant each evening.
“We call this Kiserwetter,” said Janina, our guide, when I remarked we couldn’t believe our luck at waking each morning to cloudless skies, warm sun and plenty of snow for early March. We were all pretending just to be excited, not worried at all, as we took a bus to the ski area. It was full of young people and families carrying skis and glowing with vitality. I thought I caught the young man helping us with our boot and ski hire rolling his eyes at the challenge.
Our instructor Ulrich, who had been pre-warned of our ages, smiled bravely as we stomped towards him. We were talking a bit too loudly, smiling too broadly, perhaps trying to postpone the moment when we had to clamp our feet on to the skis. Inwardly, I was sure I’d fall over as soon as I moved. But I didn’t. None of us did. Ulrich was very patient, giving us enough time at each stage of the lesson to gain in confidence.
Modern skis are much easier to manage, I discovered – shorter, lighter and rounded at the front – than the long, cumbersome things I remember from the 60s that always made me fall off the ski lift. We knew we would not be trusted on a lift of any sort, so assumed we would laboriously herringbone up the hill and slide down, falling over in the process. That’s how it was in 1958. But here there was a wonderful new device, a “travelator”, or moving walkway, that conveyed us effortlessly to the top of the gentle beginners’ slope, which was cluttered with fearless children. We were the only adults.
Two hours later, we hadn’t even fallen, had all managed some decent snowplough turns and even a sort of parallel turn. We were euphoric. “That was just amazing!” said Andrew, who isn’t given to hyperbole.
Could we have managed a whole week of skiing? Possibly, but the variety of activities Seefeld offered was more enticing. There were hikes around various lakes, buses giving us access to ridiculously picturesque villages, and the “winter hike to the Hämmermoosalm, 4.6km (and sled back down)”, as the information pack casually described it.
Having watched the Winter Olympics, Kate and I knew all about sledding. You run behind, pushing the sled, then leap on and hurtle down on your belly at speeds rivalling a Formula One car. Janina was reassuring. Nothing to worry about: we’d sit on the sled and steer with our feet. But we did worry. Andrew decided it wasn’t for him but we three plugged on.
As a 12-year-old it had been tiring hauling my father’s homemade toboggan up Gold Hill common in Buckinghamshire in our snowy childhood, and as an 83-year-old it was tiring hauling an admittedly lighter toboggan uphill in oxygen-depleted air (Hämmermoosalm, a traditional alpine mountain hut and farm with dining rooms, is at 1,410 metres) for nearly 3 miles (5km). I lagged behind, muttering to myself about being too old for this. The glühwein and Gulaschsuppe (goulash) in warm sunshine at the restaurant at the top were restorative, but the descent couldn’t be postponed for ever.
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Penny shot off ahead and was soon out of sight. I followed cautiously, getting off to pull the toboggan over bare gravel and mud, but soon realised I was wearing a broad grin: it was exhilarating. Halfway down I thought I’d wait and take an action photo of Kate. A man in a scarlet onesie skidded by, shouting something over his shoulder that seemed to be to do with Kate. No point in waiting, and I certainly wasn’t going to plod uphill again to check on her. If she were actually dead or injured, surely the chap would have told me?
“How did you keep control on those icy bits?” Kate demanded when we finally reassembled at the bottom. “My toboggan hit a bank and I was thrown off. As I lay there swearing, a man stopped, stared at me, and asked: ‘How old are you?’ I walked the rest of the way.”
In contrast, cross-country skiing delighted everyone: no slopes, no feeling of helplessness.
We also did some proper hikes around lakes with views of pines and snowy peaks, and tried the local swimming pool and sauna. Having never had a sauna before, I thought I ought to give it a go. It was all very strange and a bit alarming, with mixed-sex naked saunas the order of the day. I hired a towelling dressing gown and went exploring. In an apparently empty room, opaque with very hot steam, I sat down gingerly in my nakedness and took in my surroundings. It was like peering through a sweltering old-fashioned London fog, but I could just make out alcoves around the walls occupied by ghostly Greek-style statues. Rather impressive. Then one moved.
On our last day, after plenty of adrenaline-fuelled experiences, we finally began behaving like sensible pensioners, opting for a carriage ride, wrapped in rugs behind two enormous grey horses that clip-clopped through the still snow-covered landscape. And sampled the local cuisine and drank plenty of glühwein, of course.
What a wonderful, eye-opening and adventurous four days it had been. On the back of the Old Crones’ T-shirts is the message: “We do because we can”. Unless you try it, you don’t know what you can do.
The trip was provided by Visit Tirol and Seefeld. Double rooms at Hotel Helga in January 2026 start at €952 a week room-only. Ski hire at Sailer from €232 for six days
