Lucky Waterlooville dad wins the trip of a lifetime on the Austrian ski slopes after 20 years of holiday disappointment
IT HAD been a dream trip that had been postponed for 20 years.
But finally a single dad from Waterlooville has been able to hit the ski slopes once again after winning a holiday of a lifetime.
Graham Webster scooped the seven-night skiing vacation, worth £2,000, after entering a free competition with travel firm Inghams.
The dad-of-two was flown out to Foersterhaus zum Kramerwirt, Mayrhofen in Austria, where he re-lived his dream trip from some 20 years earlier.
The 47-year-old’s win came after ‘a couple of very tough years’ which saw him spending more than two decades trying to arrange his own skiing holidays, which were blighted by cancellations and delays well before the Covid-19 pandemic struck.
Graham said his odds-defying win of Inghams’ ‘Elevate Your Winter’ campaign, left him speechless.
He added: ‘I was lucky enough to go skiing several times when I was in my teens, until I shattered my right knee playing football and it took three years to recover. Not long after, I then snapped my cruciate ligament on my left knee so that was another wait.
‘Then life took over, I had kids. And finally, Covid, each time we wanted to go skiing things were cancelled or blocked. Now, thanks to Inghams, I get to retry both skiing and snowboarding, but on a much better scale than I could have afforded.’
Graham flew out to the slopes with a friend and insisted he had a ‘fantastic time’, with the holiday including flights, transfers and a stay in a three-star hotel.
Graham added: ‘Foersterhaus zum Kramerwirt hotel is in such an idyllic location, minutes from the cable cars and in the middle of the village, so it was easy to enjoy the sights and get to the slopes.
‘The hotel dates back centuries and has remained in the same family all that time, so you can feel the personal touches. The modifications, like the sauna, marry up perfectly with the traditional style of the hotel itself.’
Inghams was founded in 1934 and is one of the UK’s top ski holiday providers. It offers winter trips to 76 resorts in seven countries.