As someone who eschews the cold, dislikes all-in-one jumpsuits and is still undecided about the French (good bread, bad poly-ethnic diversity, mildly vexatious range of facial expressions), a skiing holiday in the Alps was perhaps not the most sensible holiday to choose.
Indeed, when you consider that last time I took a snowy holiday — to the Ice Hotel in Lapland — I got so cold that I hallucinated I was in bed with Ant and Dec, insisted that my husband check us in to a hotel with non-frozen walls and some manner of heating, then sat crying in the hot shower for over an hour, then I was, perhaps, demented to insist on a family skiing holiday.
Actually, it wasn’t me insisting that we went on a skiing holiday at all. It was our alpha-male friend Michael. Michael is basically a Kiwi James Bond — even a sedate game of tennis with him in the park tends to leave my husband with grazed elbows and torn shorts. When on R&R from his latest terrorist-foiling expedition in the Middle East, Michael suggested that, as our five-year-old daughters are best friends, we should all go on a family skiing holiday together.
“There’s nothing like tear- arsing down a black run on a sunny day,” he said when we saw him at the school gates. He had just run from his house to the school with his daughter on his back singing, “Let’s get the girls up on the mountains!”
And once he had started researching holidays, and found one in the Alps that offered moonlit skiing, he was unstoppable. “Why sit around back at the chalet in the evening, watching unspeakable French television, when you could be out on the powder!” he roared when we bumped into him in Budgens. “It’ll cut into the evening’s drinking time, but we can easily make up for it when we get back. We’ll just have doubles!”
When up against logic as faultless as that, it’s hard to resist. We inevitably found ourselves on an easyJet flight to Geneva: Michael and his wife Caroline; me and my husband Pete; three small girls (Dora, Eavie Rose and Maddie), who seemed to belong to all of us; and my sister Claire, who expressed great interest in watching my first skiing lesson.
“I’ve never seen anyone break their leg before,” she said, opening a bag of roast peanuts as we flew over Paris. “I wonder how near you have to be to hear the sickening crunch?”
After being picked up at the airport by Jess from the Aravis Lodge, it was a brief hour in the encroaching dark to the chalet in St Jean de Sixt, in the undiscovered Aravis region of the Alps. As we crossed the snow-line into perpetual White Witch Narnia, Christmas lights circled every tree and house, and the children, raised on skimpy London snow showers, “oooo-ed” in awe. Jess explained how the moonlit skiing worked.
“As far as we know, it’s only Grand Bornand that offers it,” she said, swinging the bus around a snowy, hairpin bend with admirable calm. “For four days around the full moon, you can ski at night from 9pm to 1am. If you’ve only done floodlit skiing before, the difference is magical. There’s less glare, so you can see around you more clearly. It feels incredibly peaceful.”
We put the children to bed in our room — clean, bright, basic, with bunks and a double bed, and a balcony duveted in snow — and went down for supper. Husband and wife crew John and Jacqui had taken note of our tedious food intolerances with almost careless ease, and whisked up a wheat-and-dairy free menu that included the most incredible chocolate cake any of us had ever eaten. The kitchen has an ethical policy — free-range eggs, welfare meat, local produce — and, even more important, wine that you could happily sip all night, rather than down in one like cough medicine.
Having your first skiing lesson with a hangover is, contrary to what one might expect, quite a good idea. Still merry from the night before, I came downstairs in thermals and ludicrous ski trousers and was herded into the Aravis Lodge’s in-house ski-hire room, which Michael reasonably described as a “f***ing good idea. None of that queueing up in the village b******s!” Picking up our ski-passes from reception, we were driven up to Grand Bornand, dropping the children off at a morning’s ski-school (the Garderie, £10) on the way.
My first ski lesson is, as I expected, an object lesson in screaming “No!” while falling backwards, but I am astonished to find, from the very first time I crash into a confident French five-year-old while screaming, “Pardon Monsieur!” that I love it. This is primarily, I think, because it’s a sport where one doesn’t have to wear shorts, but also has a great deal to do with our tutor, Jérôme, who is wearing a flapping oilskin coat, looks like a wizard, and is incredibly patient.
Alas, the moonlit skiing is off, for the simple reason that the moon is hidden by the clouds that are delivering the top-quality snow we are skiing on. Jess seems distraught about this — “It’s so peaceful! You’d love it!” — but Michael, Caroline and I make do with floodlit skiing instead. With the slopes practically abandoned, and the village of Grand Bornand lit up in the valley below like a moored ocean liner, we swish downhill with quiet exhilaration.
Given the levels of service, we can’t work out why the trip is relatively inexpensive — just £280pp for a four-day, all-inclusive mid-week break. The amiable and buff Paul, who is pouring our wine, says he can show us tomorrow.
Sure enough, at 11am the next day, he drives us up to Les Confins in the mountains, and to a bar-cum-restaurant by the side of a frozen lake. The scenery is astonishing — white peaks, gingerbread houses, blue sky — and the clientele is exclusively local and French. Elderly women in fur hats lunch with their grandchildren.
“This area just hasn’t been discovered yet,” he explains. “It doesn’t attract the fashion premium of Val d’Isère or Courchevel. That’s why we can offer such a good deal. That’s why we love it.”
And that’s why I’ll be going back this Christmas — this time to risk breaking my leg by the magical light of the moon.
Need to know
Caitlin Moran and family travelled with Karibuni (01202 661865, www.skiweekender.com), which offers four days in a catered chalet, including lift passes, transfers and ski team services, but not flights, from £280pp.
Getting there: EasyJet (0905 8210905 — calls cost 65p a minute, www.easyjet.com) flies to Geneva from 11 UK airports.
