In the company of giants
I'll start this months blog with a question: who introduced skiing to Switzerland? I'll give you until the end of the post to work it out.
The reason I find myself in such a mountainous frame of mind is that I am currently in the Alps, swimming in lakes, cycling at speed down mountains, and using all this peace and tranquillity to find time to write.
It's been well stated that there is never a good time to write: we always feel that we are too tired, or too uninspired, or too busy, until we start writing at which point it becomes a disappointment to stop. However, all of the many excuses for avoiding starting to write become utterly untenable when surrounded by scenic beauty. The pace of life means too busy is unlikely, and if you can't find inspiration amongst the forest and mountain streams then you are in poor company - Shelley, Byron and Wordsworth all found their muse in the Alps, with Byron and Shelley taking numerous walking holidays here. When Shelley convinced his wife Mary to accompany him on one such trip, she began writing Frankenstein on the banks of Lake Geneva, having been famously inspired by a nightmare the night before. I find myself in illustrious company and can only hope my inspiration proves half as worthy as theirs.
The book signing went off well on the 5th. After a slow start (and quite a few cups of tea), the Chelmsford public tired of sunning themselves in the unusual weather and descended on the library in their hordes. We found ourselves passing books along the long line of authors without pause, which we should have thought through more carefully, as this meant we would chatting to one person and signing for another while the first person's book was heading down to the end of the table.
Finally, as to who introduced skiing to Switzerland, the answer is a surprising Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Having travelled through Norway, he arrived in Davos in 1893 and immediately concluded that it would be perfect for skiing, a sport he had seen but never participated in. He immediately sent away for a pair of skis, and set about bemusing the natives with his fumbling attempts to learn the sport before winning them over by skiing an improbably fast journey to the nearby village of Arosa which previously had required a long railroad journey. The prospect of such rapid travel excited the locals almost as much as the thought of hurtling at breakneck speed downhill excited Conan Doyle's fellow Englishmen back home and the sport began to spread. The rest, as they say, is history.
The reason I find myself in such a mountainous frame of mind is that I am currently in the Alps, swimming in lakes, cycling at speed down mountains, and using all this peace and tranquillity to find time to write.
It's been well stated that there is never a good time to write: we always feel that we are too tired, or too uninspired, or too busy, until we start writing at which point it becomes a disappointment to stop. However, all of the many excuses for avoiding starting to write become utterly untenable when surrounded by scenic beauty. The pace of life means too busy is unlikely, and if you can't find inspiration amongst the forest and mountain streams then you are in poor company - Shelley, Byron and Wordsworth all found their muse in the Alps, with Byron and Shelley taking numerous walking holidays here. When Shelley convinced his wife Mary to accompany him on one such trip, she began writing Frankenstein on the banks of Lake Geneva, having been famously inspired by a nightmare the night before. I find myself in illustrious company and can only hope my inspiration proves half as worthy as theirs.
The book signing went off well on the 5th. After a slow start (and quite a few cups of tea), the Chelmsford public tired of sunning themselves in the unusual weather and descended on the library in their hordes. We found ourselves passing books along the long line of authors without pause, which we should have thought through more carefully, as this meant we would chatting to one person and signing for another while the first person's book was heading down to the end of the table.
Finally, as to who introduced skiing to Switzerland, the answer is a surprising Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Having travelled through Norway, he arrived in Davos in 1893 and immediately concluded that it would be perfect for skiing, a sport he had seen but never participated in. He immediately sent away for a pair of skis, and set about bemusing the natives with his fumbling attempts to learn the sport before winning them over by skiing an improbably fast journey to the nearby village of Arosa which previously had required a long railroad journey. The prospect of such rapid travel excited the locals almost as much as the thought of hurtling at breakneck speed downhill excited Conan Doyle's fellow Englishmen back home and the sport began to spread. The rest, as they say, is history.
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