Me on skis? I’d fall over, and it would be downhill from there

The former UK tennis star Andy Murray had to be rescued by a snowmobile from a ski slope recently during his first attempt at the sport.

Videos posted on social media showed him snowploughing precariously at a Swiss ski resort.

“The first two days were shocking,” he itted. “I couldn’t get off the ski lifts.”

Fearing he’d go off a cliff edge because he didn’t know how to stop on skis, he requested help from strangers before getting stuck on a piste.

“I threw myself on the ground and started trying to go down on my arse, which I couldn’t really do,” Murray added.

While Andy and I have different skill sets when it comes to tennis, it sounds as if we would be on level on top of a snowy mountain.

I’m pretty certain I would spend most of my time on my backside or crawling around on all fours, like a newborn. Unlike King Charles, who is well capable it seems.

The 76-year-old learned to ski when he was just 14 years old and has been a regular visitor to the Swiss ski resort of Klosters for more than 40 years.

But while the English monarch may have great experience, even the most athletic individuals can find that the sport presents unexpected physical challenges, so he has decided to hang up his skis.

I’m not as old as Charles, but I am a lot older than Andy Murray, who is only 37. He’s a big, strong, fit guy who has spent his life training and playing tennis at a very high level. He’s fiercely competitive too, and if someone like him can’t master the slopes, what hope would I have?

I have never skied in my life, and I have no intention of ever trying to. I’ve heard it described as the sport of knocking down trees with your face and I don’t want any part of that.

There are enough hazards in life already, without going out of my way to find more.

The closest I ever came to ski slopes was when we visited relatives in Scotland when the kids were young. It was around Christmas time, and we took a spin up to a ski resort in Glenshee in Aberdeenshire. As luck would have it, there wasn’t enough snow for skiing, but the kids were able to do some messing around on a sled.

The lack of snow meant there weren’t too many people around and the ski lift was not in use. One of the workers started it up though to give the children a go. They spent most of their time falling around while they were trying to catch it, but they had great fun.

The best part of the day for me was getting back to the hotel, having a hot shower, and sitting down in the lounge area with a hot whiskey in front of an open log fire.

Skiing has just never appealed to me. I’ve already had enough surgeries during my life, none of which I enjoyed, and I have no intention of participating in anything that has the remotest possibility of putting me in close proximity to a scalpel.

I a friend of mine went on a skiing holiday one time. He was a fit guy, and it wasn’t his first ski trip but on day one, he fell and broke his leg. He spent the rest of the holiday sitting on a balcony with his leg in plaster watching everyone else falling while he sipped his beer.

That’s more like the skiing holiday I would enjoy, but without the broken leg.

Outside the obvious dangers involved in skiing, there are other reasons why it has never appealed to me.

Apart from my advancing years, my lack of co-ordination and my hatred of the cold, I’m also a sweaty character. I sweat at the mere thought of sweating, which is why I like going to sunny places where I only need a t-shirt, shorts and a pair of flip-flops.

It’s easy to throw off a damp t-shirt and replace it with a dry one, not so with skiing.

Skiing requires two things that don’t impress me. A lot of clothing and strenuous activity - and when you put those two things together you get a lot of sweat.

I would almost certainly be in a complete puddle with fogged-up goggles by the time I reached the ski lift.

Murray luckily avoided injury during his adventure, but skiing provides lots of ways to put you in a hospital. Hitting rocks, trees, or other people, breaking a bone, or twisting a t are just some of the options.

Danger is lurking, even on nice sunny days, when you could get seriously sunburnt or get snow blindness.

Avalanches are another potential hazard, and collisions with other skiers or snowboarders are always possible.

A study into the dangers of skiing found that those wearing a helmet were half as likely to suffer spine injuries than those who didn’t.

A third were more likely to sustain a skull fracture or scalp laceration than non-helmeted people, and the helmeted participants were more likely to suffer severe injuries such as intracranial haemorrhage.

If that was meant to encourage me, it hasn’t worked.

There’s lots of advice available on how to avoid getting hurt on the ski slopes, but one piece really stuck out for me; learn to stop! I would have thought that was obvious, but not so apparently.

Experts advise that before you go on anything steeper than a baby slope, the first thing you should learn, to keep yourself safe and make skiing more enjoyable, is to be able to stop.

That makes total sense but I have a tip of my own... don’t start!