Simplon Pass

In neighbouring Switzerland, the Simplon Pass into Italy and the Great St Bernard Tunnel were closed to traffic, while two cantons were badly affected.

Sinuous, up in the sky between one mountainside and another, the most beautiful bridge I had ever seen was in Simplon Pass, on the Swiss side.

Police said a Piper plane set off on Sunday morning from an airfield in western Switzerland and was heading for Italy, but less than 90 minutes later it crashed above the Simplon pass area near the Italian border and burst into flames, according to an Associated Press report.

When romantic poets speak of the sublime, they are usually thinking of Mont Blanc or the Simplon Pass or other ­awe-inspiring natural vistas.

Making its way from Italy via the Simplon Pass to Lausanne, where it paused to pay tribute at the grave of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, the flame went through Luxembourg, Belgium – halting at the tomb of the unknown soldier in Brussels – and France, where it was transferred to the destroyer HMS Bicester, arriving in Dover nine days after leaving Olympia to a welcome from a crowd of 50,000.