PEAK SUMMER

The Alps in summer are magical. Looking up to the mountains as dawn breaks, the higher peaks are like a painted backdrop against a pale, cloudless sky, and as the temperature rises and the valleys get the sun, the villages and towns begin to bustle and their sounds carry through the clear Alpine air.

You expect overrun warmer , but in a strange reversal of fortune, Alpine resorts that once relied on summer visitors for income to keep them going through the long and inhospitable winters, now find themselves far busier during the winter months.

To attract summer visitors, rates are up to 50 per cent lower than in the peak winter season

That turnaround began in 1864 when, as the story would have it, Johannes Badrutt sat by the fire in the Kulm hotel in St Moritz with four English holiday guests and enthused about the resort in winter. He called it “a paradise on Earth”. The Englishmen, used to dark, cold winters, did not believe him,