The Crest Run by oliver guy watkins - St. Mortiz, Switzerland

Human Bullet you say! Tuck your family jewels in for this ride...plus you might grow a pair or a matching set whether the case may be!

Some experiences really aren’t worth giving up for all the chocolate in the world. It is four thirty in the morning and I am standing outside a hotel in the mountain town of St. Moritz buried deep in the Swiss Alps. The previous evening I had flown to Zurich airport with my travelling companions: optimism, apprehension and a morphine induced stupor that was still present from the emergency dental surgery I had to undergo a mere 8 hours before the flight – and, of course, my real friends that helped me get on and off the plane.

″We are all shown X-Rays of broken bones alongside videos of crashes and smashed helmets.″

My journey to St. Moritz from Zurich Airport began with two separate trains. The first boasts a highly modern glass ceiling and tilts on a single track as it travels around the vast lake which Zurich surveys. After an hour of high-speed movements through the base of Europe’s premier mountain range, we arrive at a large and busy station where we must search for the connection that will take us the final three-hour stretch.

On discovery of the vehicle, we are greeted with a highly different prospect. At six carriages long, our previous vessel dwarfs it. It is also around 100 years older. The initial feeling is worry. In the distance we can see the goal of our journey, the ever so distant mountain top buried beneath clouds. However the experience is anything but fear. We sit in a carriage arranged with tables, each set for a meal, which far surpasses any British Rail offering I ever had the pleasure to indulge in. A simple, but effective menu plays second fiddle to the beauty of the landscape surrounding us. Never before has a daylong journey been so enjoyable.

This was not however the point to the trip—although one day I may return to indulge in a rail trip though the Alps—my purpose here is to participate in an English Gentleman’s tradition. For nearly a hundred years St. Moritz has played host to the Cresta Run. A mile long sheet ice course on which a man can travel at up to eighty miles an hour face first. Known in some circles as a ‘tea tray’ the wooden toboggan with its knife sharp rails shall be my closest friend and worst enemy for the next seven days.

As I stand outside the hotel in the town centre, preparing myself for the first of seven solitary walks through St. Moritz’s cobbled and icy streets, I happen to glance at the temperature gauge placed near the door. It reads, -17 degrees Celsius. I am dressed in a pair of jeans, my converse trainers and three sweaters. I had foresight enough to bring gloves, but not to wear more than one pair of socks! My breath is freezing onto the stubble that I neglected to shave half an hour before. I later discover that it was entirely unacceptable to sport facial hair of any kind in this Gentleman’s retreat.

To say I am cold is an understatement, but I have more pressing issues on my mind. In just ten minutes time I shall sign in for the first time to the gentleman’s institution that I feel wholly separate from. Admittedly, I did attend a rather exclusive public school, but I did not continue that way to further myself at Oxford or Cambridge. In fact I left school after failing two A Level classes and narrowly scrapping by with a D grade in two others. Since then, you could say that I have indulged in life’s excess’ a little too much. Although, this does enable me to discuss the knowledge I have acquired regarding the world of wine production and indeed consumption.

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