Wish you lived here?
Crans-Montana
This sunny Swiss Alps resort
is attracting a more youthful,
year-round crowd
Top: Crans-Montana. Above: This five-bedroom chalet in Les
Briesses is on sale for CHF6.7 million with Alpine Homes. Above
left: a six-bedroom chalet in Crans-Montana is CHF5.35 millionLocation lowdown Aldeburgh
Club will help you to find
your sea legs in time for the
August regatta.Move here if... You want
fresh North Sea air and to be
a long way from a city.Don’t move here if...
You don’t want to share your
favourite haunts with tourists.Best addresses? Crag Path.What’s the house price?
High. The average price for an
Aldeburgh property is £538,153,
according to Rightmove.
Cherry MaslenAldeburgh Bookshop, and
art galleries and boutiques.Where to eat? At the fish and
chip shops in the summer; the
enterprising White Hart pub
invites customers to enjoy
them in the garden if they buy
a drink. The Two Magpies
bakery and café is a favourite
brunch and lunch spot. For
dinners out, the Lighthouse
got a Michelin Bib Gourmand
last year, while the Regatta has
been awarded an AA Rosette.Great outdoors? There are
nature reserves and glorious
walks. The Aldeburgh YachtWhere? On the Suffolk coast
in an area of outstanding
natural beauty, 25 miles
northeast of Ipswich.
Why now? It has coast, clean
air and culture, and a 1950s
charm that for years has
been attracting second-home
owners who with flexible
working can now spend a
bigger chunk of the week a
pebble’s throw from the beach.
Founded by the composer and
resident Benjamin Britten,
the Aldeburgh Festival at
nearby Snape Maltings is back
this year with an extended
programme in June, but there
are classical music and
visual arts events year-round.
It’s a pretty town with
pastel-coloured houses facing
the shingle beach and a high
street full of independent
shops, and you can buy freshly
caught fish from beach shacks.
Maggi Hambling’s sculpture
The Scallop, dedicated to
Britten, is an unmissable
presence on the shoreline, as
is Moot Hall, a Tudor building
that is still used for council
meetings and houses
Aldeburgh Museum.
“This January and February
has been the busiest I’ve ever
seen,” says Paul Gray,managing director of the local
estate agency Flick & Son.
“The average age of buyers
has come down. We’re seeing
people coming from
Cambridgeshire, Surrey and
Kent as well as London and
the rest of Suffolk.”How do I get there? It’s a
two-and-a-half-hour drive
from London, 45 minutes from
Ipswich and just over an hour
from Bury St Edmunds. The
nearest station is a 15-minute
drive away at Saxmundham,
where the fastest trains to
London Liverpool Street
take one hour, 55 minutes.What’s on the high street?
Indie food shops include Slate
cheesemonger and deli, Salter
& King craft butcher and Ash
Smoked Fishes on the seafront.
There are two good wine
merchants on the high street,
as well as the delightfulBricks
& Mortar10 Friday April 8 2022
the times
golf course, is also desirable.
Apartments of 120-160 sq m cost
between CHF3 million [£2.5 million]
and CHF5 million.” At the Sport Club
Residences there’s a four-bedroom
duplex penthouse with a roof terrace for
sale at CHF8.5 million via Knight Frank.
Six Senses, a five-star wellness resort
brand, is selling 220 sq m hotel suites
from CHF6.4 million, but for that sort
of budget you can buy a high-spec
five-bedroom detached chalet —
Thompson’s is for sale in the Les Briesses
area — with a gym and sauna, for
CHF6.7 million through Alpine Homes.
She is keen to downsize but stay in the
area. “It is a big change to live out of
the UK, but once done it is hard to think
of ever moving back.”
Liz Rowlinsonapartments in this sprawling town has
almost dried up since the pandemic
started. “Chalets that have been on the
market for two or three years have been
selling for asking price — to Swiss
buyers,” says Simon Malster of the estate
agency Investors in Property. A limited
number of properties have second-home
status, and British buyers without Swiss
residency are limited to staying 90 days
in every 180.
In the most exclusive area of Crans,
Plans Mayens, close to the slopes and
with elevated panoramic views, prices
span from CHF15,000 to CHF30,500 a
square metre, while Bluche, just outside
town, is CHF8,000 to CHF10,000 a
square metre, says Elyse Constantin of
the estate agency Alpine Homes. “Route
de Tsarbouye, by the [Seve Ballesteros]but a younger crowd — including North
Americans and Britons — are being
attracted by new additions to the area,
including Alaïa Chalet, a sports facility
in nearby Lens, with a skatepark and
parkour park; and Alaïa Bay, a wave
pool. Adam Bonvin, a co-founder of
Alaïa, says: “I grew up here and always
felt that Crans-Montana had no single
real selling point, so I wanted to turn it
into an adventure-sports hub that would
attract a wider demographic. There is
no other Swiss resort where you can ski,
surf and skateboard in one day.”
Also helping to redefine the town’s
identify is Jessica Z Christensen’s
Mavericks Active Workspace, a
co-working and wellness facility in
Montana. Her members are
globally mobile, fitness-
loving residents or digital
nomads. “There are lots
of new start-ups here,
and the increase in
remote working has
encouraged more
people to spend
longer in the
mountains,” says
Christensen, a fitness
coach who moved
here from Richmond,
southwest London,
with her husband, Lars.
Switzerland is not known for
its affordability. A studio apartment in
Crans-Montana can cost from CHF1,200
(£990) a month to rent, but the Pass 365
seasonal ski pass, when bought early at
its limited presale rate of CHF365, is
good value. Property in Montana tends
to be about 10-15 per cent more
affordable than in Crans; you can buy a
23 sq m studio apartment in Montana
for CHF195,000.
At €10,900 (£9,100) a square metre,
according to Knight Frank’s latest prime
ski index, Crans-Montana is more
affordable than Gstaad (€32,800),
Verbier (€23,500) and St Moritz
(€22,700), yet the over-supply ofI
t was the fact that Roger Moore
once lived in the Swiss mountain
town of Crans-Montana that
attracted Deborah Thompson and
her family to move there from
Hong Kong. The debonair James
Bond actor had fallen in love with
the upmarket resort while filming
For Your Eyes Only, and it was that
understated glamour that drew the
British family there 20 years ago.
“As an adventure-loving family it
was a Shangri-La for the children [now
18 and 22], who could wander around
safely, go skiing, biking, tobogganing,
horse riding,” says Thompson, 55, whose
daughter was in the Swiss ski team
and whose son attends Le Régent
international school, now linked
to the renowned Le Rosey
boarding school. “Crans
has always had a much
better summer scene
than other resorts
like Verbier — the
quality of life all
year round is
amazing.”
Famed for being
one of the sunniest
places in the Alps —
the south-facing resort
sits on a plateau in the
Valais canton at 1,500m —
Crans-Montana has not been
especially fashionable or dynamic in
recent years. However, the two-centre
town — Crans is the upmarket part, with
jewellery shops and concept stores, while
Montana is more low-key and sporty —
has begun to reverse this trend.
A glimpse of the lively après-ski at
Zerodix bar at the foot of the cable car
— where the former rugby player James
Haskell could be found spinning the
decks to a table-dancing crowd in
February — is evidence that there’s
more to this resort than the coiffed
locals sipping espressos between trips to
Hermès and Louis Vuitton. The resort
has one of the best Alpine snowparks,RhoneMontanaCransLensSierreRhoneSWITZERLAND
CANTON OF VALAIS1 mileNeed to
know
Crans-Montana is two
and a half hours by
car from Geneva.
The journey to Sierre
by funicular railway
takes 20 minutes.
Properties in the
Valais resort are
classified for second-
home occupation or
for purchase by
Swiss residents only.i
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