Novel coronavirus necessitated us all to pause and take in what was around us in plain sight all along. Many won't have liked what they saw as the 'look at' me generation co-opted Covid-19 for their Narcissistic ends; others will have been astounded by nature in their gardens and neighbourhoods, while some set off for…
It was early July in 2007. Funds were low but my by now deeply rooted desire to head to the Alps as often as possible was firmly established. Where though could I go on a budget that would barely get me three nights bed and breakfast in London, for a genre of holiday and in…
Those who seek to debunk Climate Change and Global Warming will point to the ski season beginning earlier each year as justification for their controversial standpoint. What though is little known outside of the resorts open for business at this unseemly early stage in what is still, after all, the middle of autumn, and to…
The fate of the iconic Hochwildehaus mountain hut high in the Tirol's Oetztal should serve as a warning to those who continue to deny the onrushing effects of Climate Change, and the short-sighted within Austria's insatiable ski community who insist upon putting financial interests ahead of the core values that have sought to protect unique…
Controversy caused by the expansion of Austrian ski resorts is nothing new. The Alpine arms race continues unabashed, consisting of resorts intra-competing with neighbouring towns and those in adjacent valleys and provinces. There surely though has to be a time, which could already be upon us, when seeking an edge over the competition could reduce…
The importance of recent reports detailing the loss of species to our planet is often assumed to involve areas where man's destructive hand has been most evident. Whilst cliched locations like the Aral Sea and Amazon rainforest undoubtedly represent human intervention at its most egregious the loss of indigenous species is evident all around, in…
It is surprising that Bovec-Kanin, the only Slovenian ski resort that comes close to being classed as snow sure, is but a few years from its current cableway apparatus effectively being branded obsolete. Without intervention from the north western frontier town's municipality the advent of 2022 will be marked by the effective cessation of Mount…
An appeal lodged by the Tamworth-based developer Lovell Partnerships following Blackpool Council’s refusal to grant permission for the construction of 86 dwellings on land off Warren Drive in the resort is set to be heard from today(29th January 2019), scheduled to last up to 4 days. Lovell, whose successful redevelopment of the Queens Park area…
Significant snowfall in the Alps over the last few weeks has done much to reinvigorate some already worn pistes, with certain areas receiving their first measurable, and much welcome, dump of the season. As though is often the case precipitation was far from evenly spread across the ranges of central Europe, with some lower-lying resorts…
As 2018 draws to a close another year will pass that has seen little obvious change in the fortunes of Bohinj's once iconic hotel, the Zlatorog. Empty for at least the last five years the Ukanc-based facility still ostensibly remains in the hands of failed hotelier Zmago Pacnik, who seemingly closed the doors once every…
When the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) voices its concerns over what they consider to be an 'arms race' between competing alpine resorts, and countries, it ostensibly highlights that the latest global ecological battleground has shifted to Europe's highest climes, as the insatiable tentacles of man threaten to spread over the last untouched terrain…
The potential loss of large amounts of farmland and tree cover abutting Maribor's airport flies in the face of an 'environment first' credo that Slovenia has become synonymous with, and of which it is rightly proud. Representing something of a reality check of what value is placed on prime agricultural and arboriculture that serves not…
Austria's cableway industry wields a significant amount of power in a country so heavily reliant upon the revenue generated by the purchasing of ski and lift passes. In recent years there has increasingly been an unassailable attitude by those proposing new cable cars, extensions to existing infrastructure, and the upgrading of what is already in…
Lax planning laws that foster an attitude of money first, the environment a distant second, are having a devastating effect on Britain's urban and suburban tree cover. Emboldened by the National Planning Policy Framework's (NPPF) central tenet of a presumption in favour of all developments, especially those within a municipality without an adopted Local Plan,…
Promoting responsible tourism: what does this increasingly nebulous strapline now represent? Are we expecting responsible tourism to be defined by policies outlined by regional/national tourism associations - or shaped by the actions of those for whom the industry caters? In keeping with many strands of today's society tourists, without guidance or ordinance, are content to…
A proposal to substantially invest in Slovenia's Pohorje ski resort highlights the need for lower-lying areas reliant upon winter sports income to diversify their business models, in the face of the very real threat posed by global warming. In the east of the country Pohorje is in effect the playground for the Mariborcani, much in…
Residents living adjacent to Maribor's Edvard Rusjan Airport are rightly concerned by plans to expand the facility. Doing so could not only see the loss of forest and a large parcel of agricultural land, simultaneously undermining Slovenia's hardwired 'green' credentials, but also ultimately be an exercise in futility now that the modern, fit for purpose…
The utter indifference some hikers and skiers show their alpine playgrounds never ceases to amaze me. Perhaps naively I assume that the act of communing with the mountains instead of merely viewing the jagged landscape from afar, a la Mark Twain*, and the considerable physical effort in doing so, indicates affection for their surroundings and…
The seemingly inexhaustible desire for further, bigger, longer, and higher cableways in the Austrian Tirol and Salzburgerland provinces is to many a distasteful, unquenchable process that will never be sated. The marginal net gains promised by many projects fail to justify the financial outlay but crucially, the environmental scarring of landscapes to facilitate further pistes,…
Alpine Adventures, Soccer, Central Asian Autocracies & Secessionist Politics 
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