The Beatles may be the most successful band of all time but when it came to skiing they were rubbish. It was 40 years ago that the Fab Four decamped to the sleepy resort of Obertauern in the Austrian Alps to film the winter scenes for their second movie, Help!.
Dressed like extras from the cast of Oliver! (top hats, baker-boy caps and black capes), they took to the slopes with as much gusto and as little grace as you'd expect from four lads from Liverpool who'd never been near a pair of skis in their life. To a soundtrack of 'Ticket to Ride' Paul, John, George and Ringo ride ski bikes, toboggan, take a horse-drawn sleigh and fall over lots.
Admittedly Obertauern's cameo role is fairly low-key, though the slopes do look fetchingly wide and empty. It's fair to say the village was not chosen for its looks. The closest thing Austria has to a purpose-built resort, it wouldn't win any prizes in an Alpine beauty competition. The Which? skiing and snowboarding guide says it looks 'more like a wild west town than a traditional ski village'.
But Obertauern's appeal is not about looking pretty. It's about snow. Lots of it. Built high along the Tauern pass road, 90km south of Salzburg, it has the best snow record in Austria and one of the longest seasons in Europe, with good skiing pretty much guaranteed from the end of November until the end of April. When resorts all around are barren and unfulfilled, Obertauern is often to be found basking in the white stuff. Which is why the production crew plumped for it when deciding where to film.
Apparently the Beatles used body doubles for some of the action shots (like when they are being chased by murderous snowmen at high speed down the slopes). As I stand at the top of a fiendish red run, I lament the fact that this option is not available to me.
My instructor, Wolfgang, is from the CSA Willi Gril litsch Ski School. He's an attentive and demanding teacher and no wrinkle in my technique is to be left unironed. It's only my second week's skiing and after a successful first day on the nursery slope and some simple, confidence-building blue runs, I am pleasantly surprised at how much I've remembered from my holiday a year earlier.
Unfortunately my success lulls us both into a false sense of security and on day two 'Wolfie' decides I am ready for a red. I am swept to the top of the Zehnerkar, the resort's newest gondola. It's a perfect day, with sunshine and blue skies and everyone is ruddy-cheeked and high on mountain air.
The red (which I'm convinced is a black) is much steeper than any slope I've tackled and I begin to score a slow and tortuously exaggerated snowplough horizontally across the slope, drifting across the path of anyone more intent on taking the vertical route. Unbidden, the words from 'Ticket to Ride ' drift into my head: 'I think I'm gonna be sad. I think it's today.' Lunch doesn't come a moment too soon. We are meeting the rest of our group at the Mankei-Alm, a lively, no-nonsense restaurant in a warm sun-filled basin surrounded by mountains, where you can tuck into a huge plate of rösti (€5 for as much as you can eat) accompanied by, ahem, bracing music (think Doris Day's 'Que Sera' given the oompah treatment to a speeded-up disco beat).
My companions, who are advanced skiers and boarders, are upbeat about the black runs they've encountered so far. Beginners are well catered for with a good choice of simple blue runs (are you taking note Wolfgang?) but it's for intermediates that Obertauern really comes into its own with more than 35 runs to choose from. Most runs fan out from a central point and lifts are a short plod from most of the hotels with no need for hopping on and off buses.
There is, however, little to entertain non-skiers and advanced skiers will probably find they've exhausted the possibilities after three or four days, although, in the right conditions, Obertauern does offer some excellent off-piste wandering.
There's time for a couple more testing reds after lunch, but, sensing that he's losing me, Wolfgang relents and takes me to the Gamsmilch bar at the top of the Zehnerkar gondola. The speciality here is warm goat's milk liberally laced with rum and cinnamon. They sell around 2,000 glasses a day. After two, I can understand why. Tyrolean ambience it may lack, but Obertauern has a typically Austrian après-ski scene. It starts at the Edelweisshütte, a tiny slopeside bar whose wooden walls reverberate with the sound of elaborate Austrian toasts and ends up at the lively bars in town which are full of Germanic good cheer and bad dancing.
On the last night we take a horse-drawn sleigh ride to the village of Tweng. Steam pours off the horse's back as we shush through a winter wonderland of frosted trees and icy starlight. We snuggle down in the blankets and the driver passes back a hip flask of schnapps. Eventually we pull up at the hotel for a farewell dinner of pork, sausage, dumpling and potatoes - robust, unpretentious and satisfying. A bit like Obertauern.
Factfile
Inghams (020 8780 4433; inghams.co.uk) offers a selection of three- and four-star hotels in Obertauern. Joanne O'Connor stayed at the four-star Hotel Kohlmayr. A seven-night half-board package starts from £687 per person, including flights from Southampton to Salzburg with Flybe (flybe.com) and resort transfers. Flights are also available from Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, East Midlands, Glasgow and Newcastle.
