Editor-At-Large: Lawnmowers, mobiles, barking dogs – so much for mountain peace

The silky shorts that brushed against my leg as I stood at the check-in queue at Stansted Airport should have placed me on full alert. It was 5.30am, so I was only partially conscious that the man in front was a 55-year-old builder/plumber dressed as an Olympic sprinter, in shorts and vest complete with gold chains, diamond earring and the latest Adidas footwear. Worse was to come.

Arriving at my holiday destination in the Trentino Dolomites, I soon discovered that middle-aged men the world over have hijacked extreme sportswear for everyday usage. A couple of months ago I told you about the lesser spotted British honeymoon couple I had discovered in remotest Chile. Here, another species was on parade, about as rare as the common seagull and every bit as loud.

The Italian male Alpinist has absolutely no intention of climbing a mountain – that would involve sweat and the possibility of missing a mealtime. For a desk-bound accountant, lawyer or advertising executive, the annual holiday in the Dolomites is an opportunity to display the inner macho self, revealing a secret desire to be a rugged mountain man. The streets of Molveno are crammed with examples of this holiday fashion victim. Aged between 20 and 60, they sport rucksacks at all times, wraparound O'Neill sunglasses, sleeveless fleecy waistcoats, baggy beige shorts with enough pockets to store the ground-floor stock of John Lewis's haberdashery department, and a mobile phone attached like an umbilical cord. Then there are the hiking poles, useful for navigating through the crowd from parking your car to the hotel foyer.

The wives give away the fact that strenuous walking isn't on the agenda, favouring designer tracksuits, large earrings, zany neck scarves and trainers with wedge heels. Here 90 per cent of the population are dressed to cope with altitudes of 10,000 feet by 9am when they wander down to the newsagents, buy Corriere della Sera and settle down with an espresso and a cigarette ready to plan the first big item on the day's agenda: what to have for lunch.

I naively came here to enjoy some of the best walking in Europe. How stupid could I be? No one else was bothering. By noon most people were taking the chairlift up to a series of mountain refuges whose menus offered 16 different kinds of polenta and 10 ways to combine wild mushrooms with pasta. They washed it down with a jug of excellent local wine followed by a couple of grappas, then either staggered back downhill for a sleep or stripped off to reveal bikinis and minimal underpants and sunbathed on the grass by the lunch venue.

The first time I walked along a track here was a revelation. Posses of families carried small children, groups of over-70s staggered along with walking sticks, grumpy teenagers sulked behind their parents and a woman wearing a gold survival blanket tied around her midriff, Yohji Yamamoto style, smoked a cigarette and listened to a personal stereo. An intellectual-looking elderly couple sported matching hand-crocheted berets, and a blousy female wore a shocking pink tracksuit and two pairs of sunglasses pushed up into her scarlet curly perm. Most people managed to take at least two phone calls per kilometre along the lines of "Ciao, Antonio, I'm in the Dolomites, it's so peaceful, ciao, speak to you later..." Thankfully the human traffic jam evaporated after the first café and, at the start of any serious gradient, I was left with hours of emptiness and alpine meadows, with not a soul in sight. After five hours' walking it was time to drop back down into civilisation and Track Suit Central.

Claudio, my Alpine guide, revealed that mobile phones have caused huge problems because exasperated middle-class Milanese walkers have been known to dial the 118 emergency number when their bottled mineral water runs out, offering to pay for a helicopter or jeep to bring it up to them. An emergency here would be getting up and not being able to match your shorts to your anorak.

I blame Beckham

I began by mentioning the way in which men have adopted sportswear for every- day use. Holidays legitimise the fashion crimes they commit every day. Have you noticed how old men have adopted tracksuits the way babies wear nappies? Sure, they hide a lot of figure faults, but clinging static nylon in a variety of beiges and blues is about as flattering as wearing a poncho. If God wanted us to spend our lives in drip-dry elasticated sweat pants and trousers, why would he have bothered to give us ribs, hips and buttocks? He might as well have created the human form as a kind of protoplasmic blob. Once you've passed 40, the middle part of the body is something to be bypassed by clothing. Tucking a baggy weight-lifter's vest into a pair of shorts doesn't conceal a paunch, and no amount of swagger can disguise the fact that those calf muscles are more used to a gear pedal than sprinter's starting blocks.

I blame the World Cup for the current situation. Men now think it's acceptable to walk around in full England kit any day of the week. They come home from work, take off their suits, and pop on a sartorial tribute to David Beckham. Go to the pub any weekend, and you're surrounded by people who pretend they play for Manchester United or England. We're told that now women are prepared to be more flexible at work, contemporary man is facing an identity crisis. Dressing like Michael Owen may not be the answer.

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I chose my hotel because it had a little rocking chair in the Michelin guide, denoting a peaceful environment. Family-owned, it was unpretentious, set on the edge of Lake Molveno, with stunning views of the Brenta Dolomites from the bedroom. But peace and quiet were not on the agenda. Every single home-owner and hotelier mowed the grass outside their domain at least every other day. The entire morning and late afternoon were taken up with lawn-mowing. Then there was the man with a megaphone running the kiddies' canoe-racing or the pedalo challenge on the lake. Huge lion-like Alsatians ensured that uninterrupted sleep was impossible. Do these dogs have a function other than to eat tons of meat and defecate? Do they save lost skiers in the winter months? They look too lazy and fat for that, a bit like most of the men I was writing about earlier. At least at night the mobile phones stop ringing: it's impossible to eat pasta while sending a text message. All over Molveno sales of hand-wash Ariel have boomed as tomorrow's kit is wrung out to dry and a kind of peace settles over us as we dream of steaming polenta and the perfect pair of hiking boots. Will it be cream socks or white? That is the big issue here in Trentino.

jsp@independent.co.uk